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Pleiades

Pleiades
Pleiades large.jpg
A color-composite image of the Pleiades from the Digitized Sky Survey
Credit: NASA/ESA/AURA/Caltech
Object type Open cluster Edit this on Wikidata
Other designations M45, Seven Sisters, Melotte 22
Observation data
(Epoch J2000)
Constellation Taurus Edit this on Wikidata
3h 47m 24s
Declination +24° 07′ 00″
Distance 136.2 pc (444 ly)

In visual light (V)
Apparent size
110' (arcmin.)
1.6

Commons page
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In astronomy, the Pleiades (/ˈplədz/ or /ˈplədz/), or Seven Sisters (Messier 45 or M45), is an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot B-type stars located in the constellation of Taurus. It is among the nearest star clusters to Earth and is the cluster most obvious to the naked eye in the night sky. The celestial entity has several meanings in different cultures and traditions.

The cluster is dominated by hot blue and extremely luminous stars that have formed within the last 100 million years. Dust that forms a faint reflection nebulosity around the brightest stars was thought at first to be left over from the formation of the cluster (hence the alternative name Maia Nebula after the star Maia), but is now known to be an unrelated dust cloud in the interstellar medium, through which the stars are currently passing. Computer simulations have shown that the Pleiades was probably formed from a compact configuration that resembled the Orion Nebula. Astronomers estimate that the cluster will survive for about another 250 million years, after which it will disperse due to gravitational interactions with its galactic neighborhood.


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