Matariki (Pleiades) for 2024 (Brian Boyle)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Taurus (Tau) · Contains: 16 Tau · 17 Tau · 18 Tau · 19 Tau) · 19 q Tau · 20 Tau · 21 Tau · 22 Tau · 23 Tau · 24 Tau · 25 Tau) · 25 eta Tau · 26 Tau · 27 Tau · 28 Tau · Alcyone · Asterope · Atlas · Barnard's Merope Nebula · Celaeno · Electra · IC 349 · LBN 770 · LBN 771 · LBN 772 · M 45 · Maia · Maia Nebula · Merope · Merope Nebula · And 16 more.

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Matariki (Pleiades) for 2024

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Matariki (Pleiades) for 2024

Each year, I try to produce a new image to be used in the Matariki (Maori New Year) celebrations locally in my region of Queenstown/Arrowtown/Gibbston. Matariki is the Maori name for the Pleiades, and Maori New Year is now a public holiday in Aotearoa/New Zealand, timed when Matariki first rises with the quarter moon. This year it is being held on June 28.

To celebrate, I was attempting a wide-field mosaic from Matariki to Pu'aka (Rigel). Given its much more southernly declination, it is the rising of Pu'aka that represents the New Year to Ngai Tahu, the Maori group (Iwi) in the South Island. Unfortunately I failed in that endeavour, due to Astrobin survey commitments and poor weather during the spring/summer season. I posted an image on AB of the mosaic from Matariki to Aldebaran and the Hyades, but that was as far as I got on my journey to Pu'aka.

So instead I turned to some old data of Matariki taken with my Hypergraph8, supplemented by data I had acquired as part of a consortium at Roboscopes.

In total, this amounted to 9 hours of data, and although the image processing was a little challenging, I was happy with the final result. Imaging Matariki is hard from -45 latitude, and it is only available (at an altitude of 15-20 degrees) for a maximum of three hours in a night. While my backyard observations helped to add SNR in the nebulosity, I used the Roboscopes data exclusively for the stars, since the short sub-exposure times and high elevation of the Roboscopes data gave much better stars and detail in the nebula.

I hope you like it.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9769445
PixInsight job	05RH6W34R1XKBS0ZDN88ZJTZWFLXZMJF
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	03h46m59s.19
RA (top/left)	03h41m43s.44
RA (top/right)	03h52m56s.35
RA (bottom/right)	03h52m19s.89
RA (bottom/left)	03h40m58s.50

Dec (center)	+24°08′53″.5
Dec (top/left)	+23°10′48″.10
Dec (top/right)	+23°24′55″.2
Dec (bottom/right)	+25°06′19″.2
Dec (bottom/left)	+24°52′08″.6

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Matariki (Pleiades) for 2024

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