M45 or the Pleiades Nebula is one of my absolute favorite targets.

Since I live in a light polluted urban area.  It’s difficult to photograph reflection nebula.  My skies rank at a Bortle class of 8 which is terrible.

To get this image, I traveled to a Bortle class 4 area and set up my astrophotography rig.  I did not have a dedicated pro one shot color cooled camera at the time.  So I used my Nikon D7100 with no filters at all.  This is a stock camera.

Right away on the first sub, I could see the reflection nebula.  It was awesome to finally see some blue.  If I tried this in the city, the sky glow would wipe out all of the blue and make it next to impossible to photograph. 

I got about 5 hours of data which is good, but I want to go back for more.  For a target like this, I will need about 7 to 10 hours to really bring out the nebula.  Now I own the ASI294MC Pro cooled camera.  I want to use this camera on the same target and see how much better the image will be.

Until next time…