M45 Pleiades zoom

Description

This is a zoom in on the Pleiades open star cluster, also known as Messier 45 or M45. In Japan, they are known as Subaru, and the brightmost stars of the cluster inspired the car company’s logo. Pleiades are about 444 light years from us and easily visible with the naked eye as a blotch to the right of Orion the Hunter. The cluster contains more than a thousand stars aged 75-150 million years, most of them smaller than our Sun. The brightest stars in M45, shown here, are larger, hotter, and heavier than the Sun.