The Pleiades
The Pleiades, as captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope.
Technically, they’re known as the M45 open cluster - also known as the Seven Sisters. To the naked eye, they appear as a faint blur in the constellation of Taurus. It it’s about 12 light years across and contains approximately 500 stars. The cluster is passing through an unrelated cloud of dust, which reflects the light of the brighter blue stars - this is especially evident in this Spitzer photo.
The 19th-century poet Alfred Lord Tennyson described them as “glittering like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid”.
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