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Except for the Ursa Major Moving Cluster, which is not apparent visually as a distinct cluster, the Hyades are the nearest open cluster to the solar system, located at a distance of 151 light-years and estimated to be 660 million years old. The 1st-magnitude orange star Aldebaran is seen near the eastern (left) portion of the Hyades, but is not an actual member. For a description of the Pleiades, see the closeup image. Also visible in this image is the magnitude 6.4 open cluster NGC 1647 to the upper left of Aldebaran.

Equipment: ST-10XME/Nikkor 28mm f/2.8 lens/Paramount ME/Astrodon LRGB filters
F-ratio: f/4
Exposures: LRGB: L 8 x 3 minutes: R 8 x 3 minutes: G 8 x 3 minutes: B 8 x 3 minutes: RGB binned 2x2
Date: January 27, 2006
Location: Landers, California, USA
Technical Notes:  Indivdual exposures were sigma combined. Strong gradients were present and were removed with Ron Wodaski's gradient removal plug-in for CCDSoft. The RGB image was created in Registar 1.0. The LRGB image was composited in Photoshop CS2. Unsharp Mask with a radius of 1 pixel and a threshold of 0 was applied to the luminance image and Gaussian Blur of 1 pixel applied to the RGB image.