The Pleiades (M45)

Posted: September 17th, 2009

Most classic images of M45 - also known as The Pleiades or the Seven Sisters - tend to capture the blueish reflected dust of this famous cluster. However, the region of our galaxy in this direction also has the typical reddish hydrogen gas emission. Also, some dust doesn't reflect the light from the stars so strongly, so it acquires a grayish hue. This widefield image, captured during CalStar'09, shows this peculiar dance of dust and gas, easily differentiated by their colors.

This image was selected as NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day on October 14th, 2009

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:: 6 Comments

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Ann Sidbrant (Contact, Page), October 14th, 2009, 4:20

Wow, that's amazing! What a fantastic portrait of all the nebulosity around the Pleiades! Notice how the least-blue part of the blue reflection around the Seven sisters, the Merope Nebula, seems to merge with a long, twisting strand of greyish nebulosity!

RBA (Contact, Page), October 14th, 2009, 7:35

Thanks Ann!

patrick (Contact, Page), October 14th, 2009, 10:30

Excellent and now APOD for October 14th.
Great images!!

Mark (Contact, Page), October 20th, 2009, 5:02

Fantastic photo. Saw it on APOD and had to express my appreciation!

RBA (Contact, Page), October 20th, 2009, 11:04

Thanks Patrick and Mark for stopping by and for your comments!

Roma (Contact, Page), December 1st, 2009, 1:34

wow...about 2 years ago me and my buddies in Toronto Canada went salmon fishing during the night, and i had seen this star cluster for the first time in my life..i was in awe at this beautiful patch of sky...and now i happened to stumble across NASA's website and found your picture...learning about this cluster and seeing it in real life is breathtaking......just...beautiful

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The Pleiades (M45)

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