Pleiades Cluster

Pleiades (M45) with Star Map

The Pleiades (also known as M45 or the Seven Sisters) is an open star cluster visually composed of B-type main-sequence stars that have formed within the last 100 million years. It is located in the general direction of the Terran-sky constellation of Taurus.

• The Pleiades is one of the nearest star clusters to Terra.

Description (Specifications)

Simulations suggest that the Pleiades probably formed from a compact configuration similar to the Orion Nebula. It is estimated that the cluster will survive for approximately another 250 million years before gravitationally dispersing via interactions with the surrounding galactic environment.

• The cluster is visually dominated by young, hot blue stars, but the total stellar mass of the cluster (800 M_Sol) is dominated by dimmer reddish stars, for a combined total of about 1,000 confirmed individual members within the cluster (about 57% of which are in binary systems).
• Up to 25% of the stellar population of the cluster as a whole may be constituted by Brown Dwarfs, constituting about 2% of the total cluster mass.

• The cluster spans approximately 4.5pc.
• The core radius of the cluster is approximately 2.5pc and its tidal radius extends to about 13.2pc.

The Pleiades lie at an average distance of approximately 136pc from Terra, and are located in a generally Rimward/Rimspinward direction from Terra at bearing 166.6^o Galactic Longitude and -23.5^o South Galactic Latitude.

The Pleiades Cluster is located in Subaru Subsector, AKA Ayearli Subsector, of the old Seven Sisters Sector (a.k.a. "Pleiades Sector"), now called "Ahkiweahi' Sector" by the Aslan.

• "Subaru" is the name of this open star cluster in the Ancient Terran language Nihongo ("Japanese"), originally spoken in the eastern region of Terra's Eurasian supercontinent.

History & Background (Dossier)

The brightest stars of the Pleiades Cluster are named for the Seven Sisters of Greek mythology:

1. Alcyone
2. Celaeno
3. Electra
4. Maia
5. Merope
6. Sterope
7. Taygeta

• ...along with their parents Atlas and Pleione.
• As daughters of Atlas, the Hyades were sisters of the Pleiades.

References & Contributors (Sources)

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This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Pleiades. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. The text of Wikipedia is available under the Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

This list of sources was used by the Traveller Wiki Editorial Team and individual contributors to compose this article. Copyrighted material is used under license from Mongoose Publishing or by permission of the author. The page history lists all of the contributions.

• EXTERNAL LINK: SIMBAD @ University of Strasbourg: [1]
• Author & Contributor: WHULorigan