Today’s NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day took a chilling snap of the well-known 7 Dusty Sisters. It is also called the Pleiades star cluster, known for its iconic blue stars. However, the image is in infrared light where the surrounding dust outshines the stars. NASA has revealed that the featured image spans around 20 light-years at the distance of the Pleiades, which lies about 450 light-years distant from the constellation of the Bull (Taurus).
While sharing the image, NASA explained that “Here three infrared colours have been mapped into visual colours (R=24, G=12, B=4.6 microns). The base images were taken by NASA’s orbiting Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft.” By chance, the Pleiades star cluster, also known as the Seven Sisters, is located within a passing dust cloud. As a result, the light and winds emitted by the massive Pleiades stars selectively push away smaller dust particles, causing the dust to arrange itself into filaments, as depicted in the image.