New Research Triples Size of Pleiades Cluster
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Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach in collaboration with NASA’s Universe of Learning partners: Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Video imagery:
- Hubble Space Telescope image of the Pleiades Cluster: NASA, ESA and AURA/Caltech
- Chart marking new and old members of the Pleiades: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; background, ESA/Gaia/DPAC; Boyle et. al. 2025
- Animation showing 100 million-year-old star with spots: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
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[00:00:00.00] Color images of astrophotography fill a mosaic of images that scrolls by.
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[00:00:04.50] Title Text: News from the Universe.
[00:00:10.96] Text: December 16, 2025. New Research Triples Size of Pleiades Cluster. An image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the cluster.
[00:00:21.30] Text: After detailed analysis, astronomers say the number of stars associated with the well-known Pleiades star cluster is triple its previously-known total. An illustration of a ring of stars has stars in yellow that show new candidates. A section of blue stars shows known Pleiades members.
[00:00:38.40] Text: Before this study, the Pleiades was known as a grouping of about 1,000 stars (shown in blue) in the constellation Taurus, 430 light-years away.
[00:00:49.60] The European Space Agency's Gaia satellite found about 10,000 stars that orbit the Milky Way galaxy at the same pace as the Pleiades.
[00:01:03.08] NASA's TESS satellite narrowed that number down to 3,000 stars that also rotate at the same rate, indicating a similar age. An animation shows a yellow and orange star with black spots rotating.
[00:01:16.61] The large ring of stars from earlier reappears. Text: Members of the proposed Greater Pleiades Complex (yellow dots) also have similar, distinctive amounts of elements like magnesium and silicon, according to multiple ground-based observatories.
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[00:01:35.75] This suggests all the identified stars have a common origin in a giant molecular cloud about 100 million years ago.
[00:01:49.13] Over time the sibling stars dispersed due to the forces of supernovae and our galaxy's gravity.
[00:02:00.25] This news was brought to you in part by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.