The Pleiades star cluster in Taurus. This is my third attempt at this target in the past 6 years and I think I finally nailed it. There is another shot I took a couple of years ago in which I ended up with weird halos around the dimmer stars. It’s still in this gallery if you’d like to compare.
Taken @ Cherry Springs State Park the morning of 10-08-2010. The details:
William Optics Zenithstar 80; TeleVue Flattener/Reducer; QSI583wsg; Baader LRGB filters. Guided off axis with a Starlight Xpress Lodestar guider on a CGE mount. LRGB luminance 16 @ 5 minutes each binned 1x1, RGB 10 each @ 2 minutes binned 2x2. Aquired in AstoArt. Calibrated and stacked in Deep Sky Stacker. Processed in Photoshop. Diffraction spikes added with “Star Spikes Pro” (my apologies to the purists)