The Pleiades

The subject is known as the Pleiades or The Seven Sisters, an open star cluster in Taurus about 400 light-years away — practically next door! The stars are (loosely) bound together by gravity, but over the next few hundred million years they will gradually drift apart as gravitational influences from their surroundings pull on them.

The cluster is dominated by bright, bluish stars, and it is their light that is reflected by the cloud of dust and gas they are currently passing through, giving rise to the bluish reflection nebula visible in the image.

Capturing the image

Christmas brought a couple of clear nights, and even a few hours before midnight when the Moon had not yet risen. I took advantage of that to finally capture an image in “real” colours again — so no strange palettes or anything like that here, just good old-fashioned colour photography!