Astrophotographer captures Pleiades 'Seven Sisters' glowing through ghostly blue veil

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Astrophotographer Mark Germani captured a phenomenal view of the Pleiades open star cluster surrounded by glowing blue nebulas 445 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus.

Germani's deep-space photo reveals dozens of stars from the Pleiades, a cluster of over 1,000 blue-white stars, including its seven brightest members Alcyone, Asterope, Merope, Celaeno, Electra, Maia and Taygete, from which it gets its nickname of the "Seven Sisters".

The bright stars are surrounded by vast interstellar clouds of dust and gas known as reflection nebulas, which preferentially reflect the blue light of nearby stars, according to NASA. Astronomers believe the dust is not material left over from the cluster's formation, but a cloud the Pleiades is simply moving through.

Germani spent over 18 hours imaging the Pleiades from his viewpoint in Vancouver, Canada, using an Askar SQA55 quintuplet refractor telescope and ZWO astronomy camera fitted with a filter designed to block wavelengths of ultraviolet and infrared light.

"I have had some difficulty with M45 in the past, so I decided to take a different approach with this image, ditching my light pollution filter and swapping in a UV/IR-cut filter in an effort for better colour and more faint dusty detail," Germani told Space.com in an email. "I managed 7 nights in January and snuck in a few extra hours on a night in February."

After soaring high in the winter sky, it's becoming increasingly difficult to spot the Pleiades. Currently, it can be found shining low on the western horizon in the hours following sunset in late April, but it sets less than two hours after the sun.

In its place rises a host of spring constellations filled with galaxies and other deep sky wonders! Be sure to check out our roundups of the best telescopes and binoculars if you want to explore the night sky for yourself, along with our picks of the best cameras and lenses for astrophotography.

Editor's Note: If you would like to share your night sky photos with Space.com's readers, then please send your images along with your comments, name and location to [email protected].