Pleiades | The Seven Sisters

Pleiades is an open star cluster at a distance of about 130 parsecs. Lying in the Taurus constellation, it is one of the nearest star cluster visible to the naked eye. Pleiades has over 1000 stars and interstellar objects. The 9 brightest stars of Pleiades are as follows: Alcyone, Asterope / Sterope, Atlas, Calaeno, Electra, Maia, Merope, Pleione, Taygeta. A reflection nebula surrounds the cluster, that shines blue due to the light emitted by the hot blue luminous stars. The nebula is actually a relatively dense interstellar medium, not the left-over dust from the cluster formation, as that generally gets dispersed by 100 million years. The cluster core radius is about 8 light-years and tidal radius is about 43 light-years. Core radius is the distance at which the apparent surface luminosity of the cluster has dropped by half. Tidal radius is the distance at which the external gravitation of the galaxy has more influence over the stars in the cluster than does the cluster itself. The cluster is about 100