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open star cluster

The Pleiades (Seven Sisters)

The 'Seven Sisters' — a sparkly little group of young stars.

Also called: M45, the Seven Sisters, Subaru stars.

🕒 When can I see it?🚀 Travel there
The Pleiades (Seven Sisters) — Drawn, not photographed.

What it is

Famous open star cluster of young hot blue stars, visible to the naked eye as a small dipper-shaped smudge.

Open star cluster: A few hundred young stars, still drifting apart. Every kind of thing there is →

How to find the Pleiades

Look in the constellation Taurus.

Visible mainly from both halves of the world.

Finding it: Just above the bull's shoulder in Taurus.

The Planetarium works out where it actually is from your own place and the date — including whether it is above the horizon at all tonight.

Show me the Pleiades in tonight's sky

What you will really see

With your own eyes

A sprinkle of stars; the longer you look, the more you see.

🔭 See it drawn as it looks through a telescope
🖨️ A sheet to print for this
🖨️ Print a sheet and go and look
🖨️ Sheet to take outside →

Worth knowing about the Pleiades

On the 100-meter-track scale model of the Milky Way, the Pleiades would be about 44 centimeters from the Sun. Light takes 444 Earth years to get here from the Pleiades, so what you are looking at is the Pleiades as it was 444 Earth years ago.

What it is made of
An open star cluster — a loose group of a few thousand young, hot, blue stars born together.
How we know: Comparing its hottest, brightest stars to stellar-evolution models gives an estimated age of ~100 million years.
What makes it worth knowing
Naked-eye observers typically see six clear stars, not seven; sharp-eyed observers under dark skies can spot 9-10+; the cluster contains over 1,000 stars total.
Its name and its story
Named for seven sisters in Greek mythology (daughters of Atlas and Pleione), placed among the stars by Zeus to protect them from Orion; also known as Subaru (Japan) and Matariki (Māori).
The numbers
Distance from us444 light-years

Next to it

The Beehive Cluster (Praesepe)open star clusterNaked eyeThe Milky Wayspiral galaxyNaked eyeProxima CentauristarWith effortAlpha Centauri A & Bbinary star systemNaked eyeSiriusstarNaked eyeVegastarNaked eye
📖 How the Milky Way fits together

Then go outside

Clear tonight? The Planetarium will show you what is worth a look. Then just go out.

🌙 Plan an evening outside🌌 Everything else in the sky