Messier 45: The Pleiades and Venus - A Conjunction
Date: April 3, 2020
Cosgrove’s Cosmos Catalog ➤#0022
The Conjunction of the Piedes (M45) and the planet Venus. (click to enlarge)
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About the Project
Venus approaches M45 - the Pleiades star cluster. It's not very often that you can see a planet so close to a well-known star cluster, and since it was marginally clear last night, I decided to try capturing it. This was shot with my Sony A7iii shooting with the Sony 100mm-400mm GM Zoom with the 1.4 Extender on it. The entire rig was mounted on a heavy carbon fiber tripod. This is 30 x 1-second exposure at F/8, stacked in Deepsky Stacker and processed with Pixinsight and Photoshop.
The Annotated Image
The annotated image was created with the Pixinsight scripts Imagesolver & AnnotateImage. Note that I did not have it set up completely right as it did not identify Venus in this frame.
The Location in the Sky
IAU/Sky & Telescope Constellation map showing the location of M45 as indicated by the yellow arrow
Capture Details
Lights
30 x 1-second exposure @f/8
Cal Frames
none
Capture Hardware
Camera: Sony A7III
Lens: Sony FE GM 100-400mm with 1.4X extender
Tripod: Leofoto Heavy-duty Carbon finger with heavy ball head.
Software
Image Processing: Deepsky Stacker, PIxinsight, Photoshop,
