Pleiades (Seven Sisters, M45)

With the naked eye you can see 6 to 7 stars – hence the name “Seven Sisters”. Easy to find in autumn and winter.

▶ View in the 3D model

Key figures

Distance: 444 light-years
Stars: over 1,000
Age: about 100 million years
Constellation: Taurus

Interesting facts

The Pleiades are already shown on the Nebra sky disc, which is about 3,600 years old. In Japanese they are called “Subaru” – like the car brand with the star logo.

The blue shimmer

The cluster is currently drifting through a cloud of dust. The dust reflects the blue light of the young stars, just as fog reflects the light of car headlamps.

How to find Pleiades (Seven Sisters) in the sky

Extend the line of the three stars of Orion's Belt up and to the right, past reddish Aldebaran in Taurus – beyond it sparkles a little group of stars like a miniature Plough. With the naked eye you can see 6 to 7 stars, in binoculars dozens. From October to March.

Visible with: the naked eye. More under Watching the sky.

Where is it?

Pleiades (Seven Sisters, M45) belongs to the “The Milky Way” level of the Cosmic Zoom (field of view about 130,000 light-years). Our galaxy: a spiral of 100 to 400 billion stars. The Sun lies in the Orion Arm, 26,000 light-years from the centre. All the neighbouring stars from the previous level are inside the tiny dot at “Sun”.

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