The Pleiades have long been known to be a physically related group of stars rather than any chance alignment. He published his observations, including a sketch of the Pleiades showing 36 stars, in his treatise Sidereus Nuncius in March 1610. He thereby discovered that the cluster contains many stars too dim to be seen with the naked eye. Galileo Galilei was the first astronomer to view the Pleiades through a telescope. It was chosen as the brand name of Subaru automobiles to reflect the origins of the firm as the joining of five companies, and is depicted in the firm's six-star logo. It had the largest monolithic primary mirror in the world from its commissioning in 1998 until 2005. It is located at the Mauna Kea Observatory on the island of Hawaii. It was chosen as the name of the Subaru Telescope which is the 8.2-meter (320 in) flagship telescope of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. The cluster is now known in Japan as Subaru. In Japan, the cluster is mentioned under the name Mutsuraboshi ("six stars") in the 8th-century Kojiki. Some scholars of Islam suggested that the Pleiades (ath-thurayya) are the "star" mentioned in Surah An-Najm ("The Star") in the Quran. The Pleiades was the most well-known star among pre-Islamic Arabs and so often simply referred to as "the Star" ( al Najm). Some Greek astronomers considered them to be a distinct constellation, and they are mentioned by Hesiod's Works and Days, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and the Geoponica. The Ancient Egyptians may have used the names "Followers" and "Ennead" in the prognosis texts of the Calendar of Lucky and Unlucky Days of papyrus Cairo 86637. The Babylonian star catalogues name the Pleiades MULMUL ( ??), meaning "stars" (literally "star star"), 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. The earliest-known depiction of the Pleiades is likely a Northern German Bronze Age artifact known as the Nebra sky disk, dated to approximately 1600 BC. Galileo's drawings of the Pleiades star cluster from Sidereus Nuncius They are also mentioned three times in the Bible. In Hinduism, the Pleiades are known as Kṛttikā and are associated with the war-god Kartikeya. They have been known since antiquity to cultures all around the world, including the Celts ( Welsh: Tŵr Tewdws, Irish: Streoillín), Hawaiians (who call them Makaliʻi ), Māori (who call them Matariki), Indigenous Australians (from several traditions), the Achaemenid Empire, whence in Hindi and Urdu (who called them پروین Parvīn or پروی Parvī), the Arabs (who call them الثريا al-Thurayya ), the Chinese (who called them 昴 mǎo), the Quechua, the Japanese (who call them 昴 / スバル Subaru), the Maya, the Aztec, the Sioux, the Kiowa, and the Cherokee. The Pleiades are a prominent sight in winter in the Northern Hemisphere, and are easily visible out to mid-Southern latitudes. On the reverse, the Seven Sisters (Pleiades) are represented, according to an ancient story of Australian Indigenous tradition.
Together with the open star cluster of the Hyades, the Pleiades form the Golden Gate of the Ecliptic.ġ dollar commemorative coin issued in 2020 by the Royal Australian Mint. Astronomers estimate that the cluster will survive for about another 250 million years, after which it will disperse due to gravitational interactions with its galactic neighborhood. Ĭomputer simulations have shown that the Pleiades were probably formed from a compact configuration that resembled the Orion Nebula. This dust cloud is estimated to be moving at a speed of approximately 18 km/s relative to the stars in the cluster. Reflection nebulae around the brightest stars were once thought to be left over material from their formation, but are now considered likely to be an unrelated dust cloud in the interstellar medium through which the stars are currently passing. The cluster is dominated by hot blue luminous stars that have formed within the last 100 million years. It is the nearest Messier object to Earth, and is the most obvious cluster to the naked eye in the night sky. At a distance of about 444 light years, it is among the nearest star clusters to Earth. ə d iː z, ˈ p l eɪ-, ˈ p l aɪ-/), also 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. See also: Open cluster, List of open clusters A color-composite image of the Pleiades from the Digitized Sky SurveyĤ44 ly on average (136.2☑.2 pc)