Pleiades (M45)

6. Pleiades (M45) Open Cluster Here is one of the best naked-eye and binocular objects in the heavens. Its brightest stars form a tiny dipper, causing many people to believe erroneously that the Pleiades star cluster is also the Little Dipper. Telescopically, M45 contains several hundred members, most of which lie within a degree of 2.9 magnitude Alcyone, the brightest Pleiad. The entire cluster is embedded in nebulosity, which is strikingly revealed in long exposure photographs. To view this illuminated dust visually requires care, to suppress the dazzling light of nearby stars. The 19th-century German observer H. d'Arrest commented that the nebulosity around M45 was invisible or barely glimpsed in large telescopes while it was easy in their finders. Thus, it is best viewed with low magnification. If you place a photographic mask at the field stop of an finder eyepiece to block the bright cluster stars. The finder field then will become filled with nebulosity. Some amateurs claim to have seen the nebula with their naked eye.