NGC 1746 is an Open Cluster in the constellation of Taurus.

Equipment used:- Stock Canon 40D with 200mm f/2.8 lens stopped down to f/4 mounted piggy-back on Meade LX-90 8" telescope fitted to its field tripod by an equatorial wedge. Telescope polar aligned. LX-90 Periodic Error Correction enabled. Dew Removal straps fitted to telescope and camera lens and operating. Telescope driven but unguided. Telescope and camera powered by Mains Power.

Exposure details:- Twenty sub-exposures each 30 seconds long taken at ISO1600. Each sub-exposure taken with 2 second self-timer set on camera. Ambient temperature was minus 2 degrees Celsius.

Processing details:- After quality control 16 sub-exposures calibrated with Dark, Flat-field and Bias master frames before being combined in Images Plus. This image was then further processed in Photoshop CS5 and Noise Ninja. North is at the top. Image has been cropped to give a field of view 4.8 x 3.2 degrees.

Narrative description:- Six days after New Moon, the Moon had already set before imaging commenced. The weather was cold; clear with moderate dew that gradually worsened as the night went on. There were occasional slight breezes from the north north east (the telescope was set up to the south west of my house).