M45 Pleiades RGB, Sharpstar 61EDPH + reducer

[Tommohawk]

Having moved a couple of months back, I'm still trying to get my best position sorted. Quite a nice open view of the sky, but unfortunately slopes upward to  the South about 20 degrees, LED streetlight to the North, and as I;ve just discovered a constant jet of vapour from the neighbour's condenser boiler just a few meters away to  the East. Hey-ho.

I did some Ha on California nebula a couple of weeks back, and hoped to add to this - but the boiler vapour was proving a nuisance so thought I'd have a go at the Pleiades in RGB. I'd only tried this once before and that time the blue filter was causing big issues with  my scope in the shorter wavelengths. I've since swapped to Astronomik deepsky which fixes this nicely.  

I whizzed through RG and B and then idiotically spent 2 hours capturing Ha - well, not capturing Ha as it turns out. I had in my mind Olly Penrice's lovely shot of M45 which shows lots of background detail which I assumed was Ha but turns out to be just dust. Time would have been better spent capturing Lum, but I've abandoned Lum capture with the refractor until I get round to upgrading to the Astronomik L3 filter. I used APP to generate an RGB superluminance instead.

Anyhow quite pleased with the outcome, though I think I've lost some of the background star colours. Cropped it a bit. Maybe a bit bright overall.

Red 60 x 60 secs, Green 25x 60 secs, Blue 54 x 60 secs. Calibration using darks only. ASI1600cool at -20, 61EDPH with reducer, NINA, Astropixel processor, PS.

Hope you like it, happy for any thoughts!

Edited January 11, 2021 by Tommohawk