Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/J. Stauffer (SSC/Caltech)

Pink Pleiades

The Seven Sisters, also known as the Pleiades star cluster, seem to float on a bed of feathers in a new infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Clouds of dust sweep around the stars, swaddling them in a cushiony veil.

The Pleiades, located more than 400 light-years away in the Taurus constellation, are the subject of many legends and writings. Greek mythology holds that the flock of stars was transformed into celestial doves by Zeus to save them from a pursuant Orion. The 19th-century poet Alfred Lord Tennyson described them as "glittering like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid."

The star cluster was born when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth, about 100 million years ago. It is significantly younger than our 5-billion-year-old sun. The brightest members of the cluster, also the highest-mass stars, are known in Greek mythology as two parents, Atlas and Pleione, and their seven daughters, Alcyone, Electra, Maia, Merope, Taygeta, Celaeno and Asterope. There are thousands of additional lower-mass members, including many stars like our sun. Some scientists believe that our sun grew up in a crowded region like the Pleiades, before migrating to its present, more isolated home.

The new infrared image from Spitzer highlights the "tangled silver braid" mentioned in the poem by Tennyson. This spider-web-like network of filaments, colored red in this view, is made up of dust associated with the cloud through which the cluster is traveling. One of the parent stars, Atlas, can be seen at the bottom, while six of the sisters are visible at top. Additional stars in the cluster are sprinkled throughout the picture in blue.

The Spitzer data also reveal never-before-seen brown dwarfs, or "failed stars," and disks of planetary debris (not pictured). John Stauffer of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope mission says Spitzer's infrared vision allows astronomers to better study the cooler, lower-mass stars in the region, which are much fainter when viewed in optical light. Stauffer, who admits to being biased because the Pleiades is his favorite astronomical object, says the cluster is the perfect laboratory for understanding the evolution of stars.

This image shows infrared light captured by Spitzer's infrared array camera. Light with wavelengths of 8 and 5.8 microns is red and orange; light of 4.5 microns is green; and light of 3.6 microns is blue.

About the Object	Object Name: Pleiades Object Type: Star Cluster Position (J2000): RA: 3h 47m 00s Dec: +24d 00m Distance: 430 light-years Constellation: Taurus
About the Data	Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ J. Stauffer (Spitzer Science Center, Caltech) Instrument: Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) Wavelength: 4.5 and 8.0 microns Exposure Date: September 2004 Exposure Time: 24 seconds Field of View: 58x58 arcminutes Orientation: North is 101.8 deg CCW from up Release Date: April 12, 2007
Observers	John Stauffer (Spitzer Science Center, Caltech)

Individual Images

Full image without packaging. Screen-Resolution (450x450): JPEG High-Resolution (2855x2855): JPEG | Mac TIFF | PC TIFF Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/J. Stauffer (SSC/Caltech)

The Spitzer Space Telescope is a NASA mission managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This website is maintained by the Spitzer Science Center, located on the campus of the California Institute of Technology and part of NASA's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center. Privacy Policy