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                           Astronomy Picture of the Day   
      
       Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our   
         fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation   
                       written by a professional astronomer.   
      
                                  2023 January 5   
      
                  Messier 45: The Daughters of Atlas and Pleione   
                      Image Credit & Copyright: Stefan Thrun   
      
      Explanation: Hurtling through a cosmic dust cloud a mere 400   
      light-years away, the lovely Pleiades or Seven Sisters open star   
      cluster is well-known for its striking blue reflection nebulae. It lies   
      in the night sky toward the constellation Taurus and the Orion Arm of   
      our Milky Way galaxy. The sister stars are not related to the dusty   
      cloud though. They just happen to be passing through the same region of   
      space. Known since antiquity as a compact grouping of stars, Galileo   
      first sketched the star cluster viewed through his telescope with stars   
      too faint to be seen by eye. Charles Messier recorded the position of   
      the cluster as the 45th entry in his famous catalog of things which are   
      not comets. In Greek myth, the Pleiades were seven daughters of the   
      astronomical titan Atlas and sea-nymph Pleione. Their parents names are   
      included in the cluster's nine brightest stars. This well-processed,   
      color-calibrated telescopic image features pin-point stars and detailed   
      filaments of interstellar dust captured in over 9 hours of exposure. It   
      spans more than 20 light-years across the Pleiades star cluster.   
      
                        Tomorrow's picture: pixels in space   
        __________________________________________________________________   
      
          Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)   
               NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.   
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                         A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,   
                              NASA Science Activation   
                                & Michigan Tech. U.   
      
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