🔭 M45 — Pleiades

Open cluster in Taurus

M45, Pleiades is a open cluster in the constellation Taurus, with an apparent magnitude of about 1.6, roughly 0.425 thousand light-years away.

Data

Catalogue designation	M45
Common name	Pleiades
Object type	Open cluster
Constellation	Taurus
Apparent magnitude	1.6
Distance (approx.)	0.425 thousand light-years

What a open cluster is

A loose, young family of a few dozen to a few thousand stars born together from the same gas cloud and drifting apart over time. The Pleiades are the most famous example.

Other Messier objects in Taurus: M1.

Data: Messier catalogue & IAU constellations, via English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0) · stored statically.