Taurus

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Taurus, the Bull, is a large constellation of the winter months. It is well-known as one of the Zodiac constellations, that is one that lies on the Ecliptic (the path taken by the sun across the sky). Central to the constellation is the V-shaped open cluster known as the Hyades. Further north is the familiar shape of the Seven Sisters, or Pleiades (M42).

This picture covers a large area covering much of Auriga as well as the constellation of Taurus itself. Clusters M36, M38, and the nebulosity in Auriga (NGC 1893 and IC405) are on the left of the picture, and just creeping on to the top of the picture is part of the California Nebula, NGC1499 in neighbouring Perseus. The Hyades open cluster (Melotte 25) dominates, and itself seems to be dominated by the bright red star Aldebaren, the eye of the bull. However this star is not itself part of the cluster, but just happens to lie on the line of sight with it. If you click the picture you will see a closer view of this cluster. Also in the close view can be seen two more clusters located between the horns of the bull, NGC1647 and NGC1746. This was photographed on Kodak Elite Chrome 200 film. The film processing was pushed 2 stops. This is a stack of two 17-minute images. Because of lens distortions making the two images slightly different, I had to stack them twice, using a different point each time, then cropped and joined the images together. The image was postprocessed using PixInSight LE and The Gimp.
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