Pleiades & California Nebula

[Knight of Clear Skies]

A couple of images from Christmas that I've only just got around to processing.

Took this first image with an old Vivitar 24mm f2.8 lens stopped down to f5.6, which I was very kindly given by a friend of the family. The 50mm would have been a better choice for this subject but I wanted to test out the new (old) lens. There is another large nebula faintly visible at the top of the image and the bright star at the top right is Capella in Auriga I believe.

This is a closer view of the California Nebula taken with my Takumar 135mm f2.5 lens at f4 - I think it looks like a giant squid with a black eye.

I don't have the exposure details as I stacked them in Cornwall and took the files away with me without noting them down. I think they are both less than 40 minutes of data due to cloud and dew. Processing was a bit of a nightmare as the 24mm shot picked up a big gradient from lights on in the house and the colour balance was way off in the California stack - I think I may have set the "equalize colour channels" option in DSS which was probably a mistake. I used the sharpen and life tools in Star Tools to and adjusted the nebulosity separately by making a star mask and inverting it.

Hope you like them, any thoughts would be welcome.

[wxsatuser]

Nice image from an old lens.

It puts the nebula in perspective with the stuff around it.

I believe some do call this the squid, certainally looks like one.

[Pete Presland]

Superb!

[Sleepy Kiki]

Its great to see these familiar objects in their larger surroundings

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Thanks all. I should have also mentioned that the Hyades are on the left hand side of the first image with the orange giant Aldebaran in front of them, and various other clusters dotted around.