Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Taurus (Tau)  ·  Contains:  11 Tau  ·  16 Tau  ·  17 Tau  ·  18 Tau  ·  19 Tau)  ·  19 q Tau  ·  20 Tau  ·  21 Tau  ·  22 Tau  ·  23 Tau  ·  24 Tau  ·  25 Tau)  ·  25 eta Tau  ·  26 Tau  ·  27 Tau  ·  28 Tau  ·  Alcyone  ·  Asterope  ·  Atlas  ·  Barnard's Merope Nebula  ·  Celaeno  ·  Electra  ·  HD22627  ·  HD22886  ·  HD23061  ·  HD23155  ·  HD23156  ·  HD23157  ·  HD23158  ·  HD23169  ·  And 132 more.
The Pleiades / M45, Anil Monnier
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The Pleiades / M45

The Pleiades / M45, Anil Monnier
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The Pleiades / M45

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Description

-Commonly called the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters, M45 is known as an open star cluster that is estimated to be 100 million years old. It lies 425 light-years from us, and its diameter is 15 light-years. This cluster, loosely bound by gravity, is composed of extremely hot and luminous blue stars. The brightest of these, Alcyone A, has a luminosity 1,400 times that of the Sun. The faint reflection nebula visible around the brightest stars is an unrelated dust cloud that the cluster is currently passing through. This « cloud » is called an IFN (Integrated Flux Nebula). In simple terms, an IFN is a dust cloud illuminated by the glow of our own galaxy. It is also one of the faintest astronomical objects we can see in the visible light spectrum. In this case, the blue part of the cloud is illuminated by hot central stars, but the faint clouds at the edges of the image are only illuminated by the overall light of our galaxy!

-In the background of this picture, we can find numerous faint and distant galaxies. After taking out the starts in the image, I managed to count fifteen of them, but I could only identify two. UGC 2838 and PGC 13557 are more or less edged on galaxies from our point of view. They are respectively around 315 and 450 million light-years from us! 

-The Pleiades can easily be seen with the naked eye (even in very light polluted skies) and is best observed during January in the northwest of the constellation Taurus.

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  • The Pleiades / M45, Anil Monnier
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    The Pleiades / M45, Anil Monnier
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The Pleiades / M45, Anil Monnier