The Pleiades Deep and
Dusty
From NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day
The well known Pleiades star
cluster is slowly destroying part of a passing cloud of gas
and dust. The Pleiades is the brightest open
cluster of stars on Earth's sky and can be
seen from almost any northerly location with the unaided
eye.
The passing young dust
cloud is thought to be part of Gould's
belt, an unusual ring of young star formation
surrounding the Sun in the local
Milky Way Galaxy.
Over the past 100,000
years, part of Gould's belt is by chance moving right
through the older Pleiades and is causing a strong reaction
between stars and dust.
Pressure from the stars'
light significantly repels the dust in the surrounding blue reflection nebula, with smaller dust particles
being repelled more strongly.
A short-term result is
that parts of the dust cloud have become filamentary and
stratified, as seen in the above deep-exposure image.
Image Credit & Copyright: David Lane