IC2602 - Southern Pleaides

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Someone on the forum mentioned that their favourite cluster was the Southern Pleiades. Up until now I haven't taken a decent image of it so last night thought I'd give it a shot with my new camera.

I thought I would be a bit artistic with it since my past photos of this were bland. So I increased the in-house camera saturation, all the way up! I also deliberately chose a higher ISO then necessary to bloat the stars and make them stand out. Then I did a midtone stretch in photoshop to bring out the background stars, but wanted to keep a dark background to give it a bit of punch. What I ended up with was this. I really like it and I don't care if no one else does lol.

SW ED100 at F7.2, Orion 0.8x reducer, 24 x 30 second subs at ISO 3200, Pentax K-5.

Bigger ----> http://astrob.in/104810/0/

[rustigsmed (Russell)]

very nice, i like that a lot. great star colour

cheers

rusty

[ncorreia (Nelson)]

Image looks great! The star sizes really give a sense of depth to the image

[FlashDrive (Poppy)]

yeah .... that's a nice capture .... love the star colours , nice black back ground...

Flash ....

[BruceG (Bruce)]

Yes, great result Kevin - I really like the effect.

[SimmoW (SIMON)]

Love it, nice colours.

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Thanks guys. Now I want to find another nice open cluster to try this on!

[LightningNZ (Cam)]

Very pretty. Not sure if it was me who said it was their favourite cluster but it's definitely one of my favs, and you've captured it beautifully!
-Cam

[raymo]

There's some lovely coloured stars in the 3766 field Kevin.
raymo

[Regulus (Trevor)]

Kevin, thats quite beautiful.
Loving the colour and depth. It's the sort of picture I would hang on my wall (if I owned a wall).
Trev

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Thanks Cam, Ray Trevor. Ray, I'll try for 3766 The Pearl cluster if I can before the Moon comes along.

You know what, this image will change the type of objects I try for now. I mean jeez, it's only 12 minutes, 30 second subs. How easy is that? I can do that anytime in cloudy Mackay through gaps in clouds, with a consumer grade DSLR. 4+ hour exposures I can only do on a couple of days per year, usually only in June or July.

There is only one Southern Pleiades though, but let's see if I can take what I've learned from it to some other clusters.

And I must get more ink. This will look great in the A3 album.