Explanation:
Hurtling through a cosmic dust cloud a mere 400 light-years away,
the lovely Pleiades
or Seven Sisters star cluster is well-known for its striking blue
reflection nebulae.
This remarkable wide-field (3 degree)
image of the region
shows the famous star cluster at the right, while
highlighting lesser known
dusty reflection nebulae nearby, across an area
that would span over 20 light-years.
In this case, the sister stars and
cosmic dust clouds
are not related, they just happen to be passing through
the same region of space.
But astronomers using infrared detectors
have recently found a
dusty disk that really does belong to one young
Pleiades star -- HD 23514.
Surrounding HD 23514, the disk is estimated to be comparable in
size to the terrestrial planet zone in our own
solar system
and likely represents the
debris from the process
of rocky planet formation.
