Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Taurus (Tau)  ·  Contains:  Barnard's Merope Nebula  ·  IC 349  ·  Maia Nebula  ·  Merope Nebula  ·  NGC 1432  ·  NGC 1435  ·  The star 18Tau  ·  The star Atlas (27Tau)  ·  The star Celaeno (16Tau)  ·  The star Electra (17Tau)  ·  The star Merope (23Tau)  ·  The star Pleione (28Tau)  ·  The star Sterope I (21Tau)  ·  The star Taygeta (19Tau)  ·  The star ηTau
Pleiades - Messier 45, Giuseppe Donatiello
Pleiades - Messier 45
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Pleiades - Messier 45

Pleiades - Messier 45, Giuseppe Donatiello
Pleiades - Messier 45
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Pleiades - Messier 45

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M45

Credit: Giuseppe Donatiello

Based on images taken with ED 127 f/9 + 0.55x + Canon EOS 4000D + Tair-3S 300mm f/4.5 and Pentacon 200mm f/4.0 lenses combining also old Kodak E200 digitized slides.

RA 3h 47m Dec +24° 07′

The Pleiades 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 distance to the Pleiades can be used as an important first step to calibrate the cosmic distance ladder.

More recent results using the Gaia satellite (September 2016), determine distances of 134 ±6 pc.

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, but is now known to be an unrelated dust cloud in the interstellar medium, through which the stars are currently passing.

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Pleiades - Messier 45, Giuseppe Donatiello

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