Astrophoto: Beautiful Electric Blue Pleiades

By Nancy Atkinson - January 09, 2013 07:57 PM UTC | Stars

What a great shot of the Seven Sisters! M45, or the Pleiades is a cluster of stars that contains hundreds of stars, but just a handful are commonly visible to the unaided eye. The stars in the Pleiades are thought to have formed together around 100 million years ago, making them 1/50th the age of our Sun, and they lie about 450 light years from Earth. Chuck Manges, (

astrochuck on Flickr

) took this image on January 5, 2013 with a QHY9M camera and an Orion ED102CF telescope, and processed it in Photoshop. Gorgeous!

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Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com