Description
The Pleiades (Messier 45) is one of my favorite deep sky objects, and you can even see it as a faintly cloudy miniature "dipper" with the unaided eye in the constellation Perseus through much of the year. (It helps to look with averted gaze. Your color vision is better at the periphery than at the center at night.) The Pleiades is a reflection nebula: streaky clouds of interstellar dust reflect the bright light of young, hot stars.
Interestingly, the "Seven Sisters" exists with a very similar stories in several ancient cultures, which may well have originated in a common story 100,000 years ago. Today, Atlas and Pleione (the two bright blue stars on the left) are so close that they blur together without a telescope. But 100,000 years ago, they were just far enough apart to be seen as separate stars. Somewhere between then and now, the 7th sister was lost, and hence the retained name "7 Sisters" over the ages and across cultures. There's a fascinating read about this on The Conversation (https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-oldest-story-astronomers-say-global-myths-about-seven-sisters-stars-may-reach-back-100-000-years-151568).
This photograph combines 12.5 hours of three-minute long exposures captured on a 115mm refractor telescope from an Indiana backyard in September 2022.
If you'd like to learn more about the technical details of how I created this photo, please visit: https://www.astrobin.com/5pq343/