The Pleiades

03h 46m 24s   +24° 06′ 50″

The Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters, are among the nearest star clusters to Earth — a young family of hot blue stars born from the same cloud of gas roughly 100 million years ago. Cultures across the world have named and navigated by them for thousands of years, from the Māori (Matariki) to the Japanese (Subaru) to ancient Greek sailors who timed their voyages by the cluster's rising and setting. In a clear dark sky they appear as a small, shimmering knot of six or seven stars to the naked eye, though the cluster contains over a thousand. Wisps of reflection nebulosity — interstellar dust caught in the starlight — thread between the brightest members, giving the group an ethereal, almost ghostly glow in long exposures.