Pleiades from Siding Spring⁠⁠

The Pleiades star cluster, captured from Australia's Siding Spring Observatory (31 degrees south latitude).

In my humble opinion, this is one of the best pictures of the Pleiades in the history of astronomy, at least in the category of spectacular images. But it was taken from a continent from which the Pleiades are not very visible. Not to say that they are badly visible, but they do not rise above 35 degrees - like Orion's Belt in the middle northern latitudes. This introduces its own difficulties - in terms of atmospheric transparency and exposure time (series duration), and the Pleiades visibility season is very limited there. Nevertheless, the result is stunning.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTc092jv6Ok

I couldn't resist adding my own melody to this frame, which is related to the Pleiades: "Conversation with the Pleiades"

PS: Not everyone knows, but in the southern sky there are their own - the so-called - "Southern Pleiades". But we'll talk about them some other time.

Original photo

It was published in late 2022 on APOD: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap221205.html