October 18, 1997
The night sky on your birthday is never quite the same twice — the planets shift, the constellations drift, the Moon wears a different phase.
The Pleiades Star Cluster
Birthday · October 18, 1997
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APOD published October 18, 1997. Credit: D. Malin (AAO), AATB, ROE, UKS Telescope. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
It is the most famous star cluster on the sky. The Pleiades can be seen without binoculars from even the depths of a light-polluted city. Also known as the Seven Sisters and M45, the Pleiades is one of the brightest and closest open clusters. The Pleiades contains over 3000 stars, is about 400 light years away, and only 13 light years across. Quite evident in the above photograph are the blue reflection nebulae that surround the bright cluster stars. Low mass, faint, brown dwarfs have recently been found in the Pleiades.
Image credit: D. Malin (AAO), AATB, ROE, UKS Telescope