Tag: Long Exposure Astrophotography

🌌 New Astrophotography Project: Going Deep on M45 (The Pleiades)

Gareth HardingLeave a comment
A deep astrophotography capture of M45, the Pleiades star cluster, showing bright blue reflection nebulosity, soft interstellar dust clouds, and the dense star field surrounding the Seven Sisters. The image highlights fine dust filaments and subtle colour variations across the cluster.

Tonight marks the start of a brand-new long-term project: a deep, high-resolution exploration of M45 — The Pleiades.
It’s one of the most iconic objects in the night sky, but beneath the bright blue stars is an incredible world of hidden dust, faint reflection nebulosity, and intricate filaments that only reveal themselves with serious integration time.

My plan is to push this target much deeper than my usual widefield attempts. I want to pull out the delicate, smoky dust lanes surrounding the cluster — the parts that often get lost or clipped in shorter exposures. With enough hours, the Pleiades transforms from a star cluster into a drifting cloud of ancient interstellar material, carved and illuminated by starlight.

The goal for this project is:

✨ Project Goals

  • Capture fine dust detail in the Merope and Maia regions
  • Reveal the faint outer reflection nebulosity that makes M45 so dramatic
  • Produce a clean, natural-colour broadband image with strong contrast
  • Build a dataset with enough depth to withstand high-resolution processing
  • Create a final piece worthy of printing and adding to my Eternal Skies portfolio

This will be a multi-night capture, spread over as many clear opportunities as the weather allows (so… we’ll see what the UK has planned). I’ll be sharing updates as the data builds and the image takes shape.

It’s always exciting starting something new — especially a target as beautifully complex as the Pleiades. Time to chase the dust.

Clear skies ✨

Veil Nebula (4-Panel Mosaic Progress)

Gareth HardingLeave a comment

Blog Update — Veil Nebula (4-Panel Mosaic Progress)

Over the last few weeks I’ve returned to the Veil Nebula with a proper long-term plan: build out a full 4-panel mosaic with enough integration time to finally pull out the faintest strands of oxygen and sulphur drifting across this ancient supernova remnant.

This new version is my first full process pass using the updated data — now sitting at around 16 hours total exposure spread evenly across the mosaic. Even at this stage, the difference is huge. The extra depth has brought out delicate filaments that were barely visible before, along with more structure in the darker, ghost-like wisps threading through the centre.

What’s been especially rewarding is seeing how the Forax SHO blend responds as the hours stack up. The contrast between the cool OIII arcs and the warm, ember-like SII regions is starting to take on that three-dimensional look the Veil Nebula is famous for.

There’s still more work ahead — more time to collect, more fine-tuning across the panel seams, more experimenting with colour balance and star control — but this feels like a proper milestone. The mosaic is finally beginning to feel complete.

Two Views of the Veil Nebula
Two Views of the Veil Nebula

Forax Palette

The Veil Nebula in the Forax colour palette reveals a haunting, almost ethereal web of gas and dust. This palette enhances subtle contrasts, drawing out the intricate wisps that sweep across space like cosmic brushstrokes. What we’re seeing are the remnants of a massive star that exploded roughly 8,000 years ago, its energy still rippling through the interstellar medium. At about 110 light-years wide and located 2,400 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, the Veil is expanding at a staggering 1.5 million kilometres per hour. The Forax mapping really brings out the fine filaments, giving us a sense of just how delicate, yet vast, this supernova remnant truly is.

Hubble Palette (SHO)
In the Hubble palette, the Veil Nebula takes on an entirely different personality—bold, vivid, and structured. By assigning sulphur to red, hydrogen to green, and oxygen to blue, the SHO mapping creates a detailed chemical portrait of the nebula. This technique highlights the powerful shockwaves as they carve through the interstellar medium, showing glowing arcs where different elements collide and interact. The Veil isn’t just a pretty sight—it’s a living laboratory of astrophysics, helping astronomers study the long-term effects of stellar death. From its vibrant colours to its turbulent motion, the Hubble palette showcases the raw energy still locked inside this vast, expanding ghost of a star.