Attached is a picture of the Seven Sisters star cluster taken at the Mary Aloysia Hardey Observatory at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Greenwich. It is a 24-minute exposure with a Canon T2i(a) Camera attached to a 76mm TeleVue telescope. Image data acquired with BackyardEOS software.

This star cluster is also known as the Pleiades, and is almost straight up in the winter sky. The Pleiades are located within the constellation Taurus. If you want to see its precise location in that constellation you can check out my Taurus blog.

Like all star clusters, the Seven Sisters formed from the collapse of a huge gas cloud. It is estimated to have formed about 100 million years ago.

Most people can see six or seven stars in this cluster without optical aid, but keen eyed observers in very dark skies have seen as many as 14. Careful studies with modern equipment have found almost 500 stars in an area 15 light years across.

Often mistaken for the little dipper, the Seven Sisters are the second nearest star cluster to us at 400 light years away. Notice the blue wispy nebula in the picture. It was thought this nebula was left over gas from the cluster formation and had yet to be absorbed into the cluster stars. It is now known to be foreground gases in the same line of sight.

I find it very interesting that our own sun could have formed in a star cluster much like the Seven Sisters and drifted out on its own in the in the 5 billion years since. Star clusters drift apart after a two or three hundred million years so we may never know the ‘birthplace’ of our sun.