images

The Pleiades star cluster

by

Caltech/Novapix

Reference

a-aou90-00006

Date

2006-05-07

The Pleiades are a reflection nebula associated with a cluster of young stars. The cluster itself is a group of many hundreds of stars about 400 light years from Earth in the northern constellation of Taurus.Seven of the brightest stars are quite easy to see with the unaided eye.The nebulosity seen here is light reflected from the particles in a cloud of cold gas and dust into which the cluster has drifted. It appears blue because these tiny interstellar particles scatter blue light more efficiently than the longer wavelengths of red light and it is streaky because of the distribution of dust particles in space.