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The above photography is reprinted with permission of NASA.
Within the territory of Taurus there is little jewel box of stars. It has many names: The Severn Sisters, M45 (because it’s the 45th object on Messier's list and most commonly – the Pleiades.
The Pleiades is a cluster of stars about 400 light years away from us. Its seven brightest stars form a miniature version of the "Big Dipper" with the brightest being 2.9 magnitude Alycyone. The Japanese word for Pleiades is "Subaru: and ornament piece on that car is a diagram of the Pleiades. You can see the slightly glowing clouds of dust in images of the Pleiades made with telescopes, but in my mind the real glory of the Pleiades is best seen through binoculars. Viewed through binoculars you have a large enough field of vision to take in the entire Pleiades and there is a three-dimensional quality to the image.
The "Pleiades" originally referred to Atlas' seven daughters: Electra, Taygete, Alcynonem, Merope, Calaeno, Moia and Sterope. The Pleaides' visible stars were given these names with the addition of a star being named after Atlas himself. Zeus placed the Pleiades in the heavens to protect them from Orion who was pursuing them.
Orion