The Pleiades (M45) are an open cluster in Taurus, about 440 light years away: one of the most recognisable celestial objects, and one of the oldest in human memory — mentioned by Homer, by Hesiod and in the Bible.
Its stars are only about a hundred million years old — very young next to the Sun's nearly five billion — and they are hot and blue. The veil around them is not leftover material they were born from, as was long believed: it is a cloud of interstellar dust the cluster happens to be drifting through, reflecting its light.
The naked eye counts six or seven; binoculars show dozens, and photography reveals the blue streaks of nebulosity aligned along the cloud's magnetic field lines.
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