Canon 350D Hap Griffin Baader Mod
51x60sec at iso 1600
30 Darks/Flats/Bias
Canon 70-200 f/2.8 L at 200mm and f/3.2

North is to the left in this image.

The Hyades (Melotte 25 or Collinder 50 or Caldwell 41) is the nearest open cluster to the Solar System and one of the best-studied of all star clusters.

The cluster is composed of about 400 stars at a distance of 151 light years from earth. This distance is very accurately known as the stars all move together toward a point slightly east of Betelgeuse. The red giant Aldebaran looks to be part of the group, but in actuality is much closer to us (only 60 light years distant) and coincidentally in line of sight with the cluster. The central group is roughly 10 light years in diameter, while outlying members seem to be spread over a volume of at least 80 light years.

A diagram and mpg movie shows the spatial relationship of the stars to one another.

The two dark nebulae seen to the northwest of Aldebaran (left and upward) are in order, LDN 1543 (which also contains bright nebula Sh2-239 and can be seen as the tiny nebula in the lower right edge of the dark nebula) and Be 84. The bright star adjacent to LDN 1543 is Ain (Epsilon Tauri), which is the first star in an open cluster to have been found to have a planet and the most massive star know to have a planet (Epsilon Tauri B) - but not a planet we would like to live on.

November 4, 2008