Pleiades

Apart from stars there are many more interesting things to look at in the night sky.Most of these are know as Messier objects.There are 110 such objects and in this post i'll be telling you about one such Messier object known as M45 or Pleiades.It is an open star cluster containing seven stars that is located in the constellation Taurus.It is located on the extreme right side of the star Aldebaran which is a red giant and also one of the brightest star in the Taurus constellation.Pleiades looks somewhat like the Ursa major except for the fact that it is way small and you need a clear sky with minimum distractions to spot it.Pleiades consists of nine stars(it is difficult to find all the nine stars....although you can spot around six of them).These are Atlas,Merope,Electra,Maia,Taygeta,and Alcyone.M45 ,it has an apparent magnitude of 1.6.Now if any stellar object has an apparent magnitude between -38 and 6 then it is visible to the naked eye whereas anything above 6 would be invisible to the naked eye.Now the apparent magnitude of the Sun as seen from the Earth is -26.74.Apparent magnitude of Sirius is -1.47.The apparent magnitude of Aldebaran is between 0.75-0.95.So in short M45 is quite a bright object.
If you want to know more about the Pleiades then go to:-
www.youtube.com/watch?v=t31lVCPMEZc

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