I apologize to anyone who was expecting me to post M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, tonight. I have failed you for reasons too esoteric to entertain here. Please accept this humble offering of M45, the Pleiades open cluster in the constellation Taurus, as a temporary substitute.
The Pleiades are a visual object – no telescope or even binoculars are needed to spot it (them). The star configuration resembles a little dipper like that of Ursa Minor. Only 444 light years from us, the Pleiades cluster is in the hood, as it were. The major stars are surrounded by an interstellar dust cloud that reflects their light. The dust cloud was once thought to be the birthplace of these stars, but now the thought is that the cluster is just passing through this dust lane. They may in fact accrete some of this material as they pass through the dust lane – who knows?
Our cat Maia is named after one of the stars in the cluster (the fourth brightest). The other sisters are Merope, Electra, Alcyone, Celaeno, Taygeta, and Asterope. On our way to Casitas de Gila last week, I asked Susan to tell me the names of their (Greek mythological) parents.
Susan: “Their father was the Titan Atlas whose chore was to carry the cosmos on his shoulders. Their mother was Pleione – a sea nymph.”
Me: “So how did they become stars?”
Susan: “It seems that Atlas, unable to protect his daughters, was worried that Orion, the hunter, would rape them. To calm Atlas, Zeus turned the daughters into doves and subsequently into stars. They are always ahead of Orion who pursues them across the sky.”
Me: “I always thought that Orion was a hunter. I had no idea that he was also a rapist. None of the astronomy books that I read as a kid mentioned Orion the rapist.”
The image below is a composite of 10, 6-minute exposures. You can see the reflection nebulae around the brighter stars in the cluster. I recently saw an amateur astrophotograph of this object revealing not only the reflection nebula but a faint emission nebula (ionized hydrogen) halo beyond the reflection nebula. I think that image comprised more than 10 hours of imaging time.
