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Credit & Copyright: Stefan Thrun
Explanation:
Hurtling through a
cosmic dust cloud a mere 400 light-years
away, the
lovely Pleiades
or Seven Sisters open star cluster is well-known for its striking blue
reflection nebulae.
It lies in the night sky toward the constellation Taurus and the
Orion Arm of our Milky Way galaxy.
The sister stars
are not related to the dusty cloud though.
They just happen to be passing through the same region of space.
Known since antiquity as a compact grouping of stars,
Galileo
first sketched
the star cluster viewed through his telescope
with stars too faint to be seen by eye.
Charles Messier
recorded
the position of the cluster as
the 45th entry in his famous catalog of things which are not comets.
In Greek myth, the
Pleiades were
seven daughters
of the astronomical titan Atlas and sea-nymph Pleione.
Their parents names are included in the
cluster's
nine brightest stars.
This well-processed, color-calibrated
telescopic image features
pin-point stars and detailed filaments of interstellar dust captured
in over 9 hours of exposure.
It spans more than 20 light-years across the Pleiades star cluster.
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NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: M 45 - pleiades
Publications with words: M 45 - pleiades
See also: