M45 - Pleiades

Object image

Permission

Like bright jewels on the back of Taurus sit the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters, a tiny cluster of brilliant bluish stars. Most people can see 6 stars, but in antiquity 7 were visible. With binoculars or a telescope you can see many more.

Tennyson wrote:

Many a night I saw the Pleiades
rising thro’ the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies
tangled in a silver braid.

In Middle Earth, the Pleiades were known as Remmirath (the Netted Stars). (Rachel Folmar)