Pleiades First Light

No prizes for guessing the target.

Sure, you already mentioned it in your thread title!

As Dave Grennan said, you got the focus almost bang-on, but you do need to go easy on the blue and red levels. Don't forget, at such low magnification (without modifications, or filters), your stars should be almost white with a hint of blue. Only with the proper mods and filters will you get the blue star colour you see in many (more advanced) photos, so don't try making us see what you think we should see, just the way you saw it is fine!

Good attempt! Did you count the stars yet?

so don't try making us see what you think we should see, just the way you saw it is fine!

Seanie, You got what I saw. There is no processing done on the shot at all other than automatic darks and unsharp mask.

I seem to be getting conflicting advice here. Dave Lillis is telling me to tone down the blue, and Dave Grennan is telling me to go more to the blue and away from the red.
Also I am now looking at this on my monitor in work and the main stars do look a little purple so moving to the blue makes sense. These stars looked more white on my laptop last night.

What you need to do then John, is calibrate your monitor. This is adjusting your brightness and contrast levels to ensure a complete change in spectrum is noticeable. I won't go into the technicalities, but Dave McDonald has an example for use here .

Good attempt! Did you count the stars yet?

I can usually count about 9 or 10 naked eye after my eyes have adjusted, and that's in my fairly light polluted back garden in Firhouse. Thought I was kidding myself the first time I did this, but I often do it just to get an idea of seeing and transparency levels.

oops sorry John, the stars do look more purple then I realised so decreasing the red will solve this, if the stars are too blue then reduce that slightly also, you'll know when you try it.