The Pleiades

The Pleiades are easy to see without a telescope, but this 71-minute stack brought out something my eyes could not: the blue haze winding around the cluster's brightest stars.

M45 is an open cluster containing more than a thousand loosely bound stars, although a handful of bright members dominate the view. The blue glow is a reflection nebula—starlight scattering from an unrelated cloud of dust that the cluster is currently passing through.

That contrast is what I like about this photograph. The stars look sharp and immediate, while the dust around them appears soft enough to disappear if the exposure or framing is even slightly off.