11 Facts About Pleiades

Pleiades, known as The Seven Sisters, Messier 45 and other names by different cultures, is an asterism and an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot B-type stars in the north-west of the constellation Taurus.

Computer simulations have shown that the Pleiades were probably formed from a compact configuration that resembled the Orion Nebula.

Pleiades are a prominent sight in winter in the Northern Hemisphere, and are easily visible out to mid-Southern latitudes.

In Hinduism, the Pleiades are known as Krttika and are associated with the war-god Kartikeya.

The Babylonian star catalogues name the Pleiades, meaning "stars", and they head the list of stars along the ecliptic, reflecting the fact that they were close to the point of vernal equinox around the 23rd century BC.

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The Pleiades was the most well-known star among pre-Islamic Arabs and so often simply referred to as "the Star".

Some scholars of Islam suggested that the Pleiades are the "star" mentioned in Surah An-Najm in the Quran.

Pleiades thereby discovered that the cluster contains many stars too dim to be seen with the naked eye.

Pleiades have long been known to be a physically related group of stars rather than any chance alignment.

Distance to the Pleiades can be used as a key first step to calibrate the cosmic distance ladder.

Nine brightest stars of the Pleiades are named for the Seven Sisters of Greek mythology: Sterope, Merope, Electra, Maia, Taygeta, Celaeno, and Alcyone, along with their parents Atlas and Pleione.