Pleiades

Pleiades — star cluster, explore its interactive 3D model in Cosmoscope.

Explore the Pleiades in an interactive 3D star cluster. Fly among Gaia DR3 stars and reconstructed reflection nebula dust in space.

The Seven Sisters — the sky’s most famous cluster, young hot stars still wrapped in wisps of the reflection nebula they are drifting through.

Type

Open star cluster

Distance

440 light-years

Stars

1,689 Gaia DR3 members shown (seven by eye)

Age

~100 million years

Shown here

Each member at its Gaia DR3 position (Hunt & Reffert 2023)

Depths

Faint stars with uncertain parallaxes are held near the cluster’s mean depth

Nebula

Dust the cluster is passing through, lit by its brightest stars

Nebula image

NASA, ESA and AURA/Caltech (POSS2) · stars removed, re-lit in 3D

Outer dust

AKARI far-infrared map (JAXA/ISAS) · lit by the cluster and the Galaxy’s starlight

Dust depths

Thin folded sheets, mostly just in front of the stars; exact depths illustrative

Explore Pleiades in 3D

Pleiades is placed in three-dimensional space using catalogue coordinates and an adopted astronomical distance. Rotate and zoom to explore the model. Stellar surfaces, gas structure and dust depths may be reconstructed or illustrative, as described in its facts; this is not live imagery from a telescope.