Clear crisp winter nights can be some of the best times for astronomical observing. There is something about the chill in the air that makes the sky more appealing. In reality the cold winter nights are not always the best for seeing conditions, but naked eye views of the sky seem to bring an almost mystical perspective when the night air has that quiet chill. At my house, there are a couple of owls that like to make their "who-who"'s which makes it even more magical.
One of the objects that faithfully shines brightly in the winter sky is the Pleiades open star cluster, catalogued by Messier as M45. The Pleiades is a nice little grouping that many non-astronomers will notice (as long as their eyesight is reasonably good), and sometimes they will even mistake it for the Little Dipper since it does have a dipper-like appearance.
This image was taken back in December on several clear cold nights. Total exposure time for each color filter was 2 hours (24x5 min each) plus another 48 min of Luminance. The blue reflections in the nebulosity surrounding the cluster are easily visible in an eyepiece, but the nebulosity itself is believed to be an unrelated interstellar dust cloud that the cluster just happens to be passing through. Imagine what the sky would look like if you lived on a planet in this area!
Click Here for a larger, higher resolution version of this image.
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