COMMENTS ON THE OBJECT

The Pleiades is the name of Greek origin given to an open cluster that can be easily seen in the night sky. It is one of the most beautiful celestial objects we can see from Earth.

An open cluster means that it is a group of young stars. Astronomers have counted more than 1,000 members in the Pleiades, with a mass of about 800 suns. It is one of the many nurseries of the Milky Way and one of the closest to our Solar System. From our planet, we see them shining in the constellation of Taurus.

The Pleiades, also known as Messier 45 (M 45), extend some 15 light years to approximately 430 light years. They were born, as a whole, about 100 million years ago. Over the next 250 million years, these baby stars will spread throughout the Galaxy. Its brightest stars are hot blue class B giants. Stars smaller and paler than our Sun also shine there: red dwarfs as well as brown dwarfs. Not forgetting that many of the stars are double stars. And, more astonishingly, white dwarfs have been observed there.

As we can see on the photograph and also, when the conditions of observation are good (in the absence of the Moon and light pollution), the Pleiades are covered with gas. In particular the star Merop. The cluster is bathed in a nebula by reflection.