 Greetings and welcome to the Astronomy Picture of the Day podcast. Today's picture for January 29th of 2024 is titled The Pleiades, Seven Dusty Sisters. So what do we see here? Well, this is actually the Pleiades star cluster, which is very prominent in the northern sky. It's been the constellation of Taurus and can very easily be seen with the naked eye. So, looking up from Orion, which many people can recognize, and if you look generally up to the upper right of Orion, you'll see the constellation of Taurus, and there'll be a little bit of a fuzzy patch of stars there, and that is actually the Pleiades star cluster. Now, you won't be able to, of course, see all of the great detail that we can see in an image like this, but you can see it, and even with a small telescope or a pair of binoculars, you can easily make out this cluster of stars. Now, we also see the surrounding dust around them. Now, in some cases, the dust is actually associated with the star cluster and is left over remnants from the stars that formed. That is not the case of the Pleiades star cluster. In this case, the dust is not associated with the Pleiades, but just happens to be passing through the same area. So, yes, they are together. They are at the same distance from us, but they are just passing through. They are not actually physically associated with each other in the way that they formed together. So, two separate things, just passing by each other, passing through each other in this sense. Now, when that happens, the bright stars, the hot stars, which are blue stars, will scatter their light off of the dust grains, and that gives us the blue reflection nebula that we see all around here. So, it's similar to what happens in our own sky. In our sky, it is molecules of the atmosphere that are scattering blue light better than red light. Well, here, the same thing is happening with the dust around the star cluster. The dust is very good at scattering blue light, so it seems to come from all around, much as blue light comes from all around our sky, whereas the red light just seems to go straight through, and therefore we don't see it directly. We don't see it being scattered by those same dust particles. Now, the dust will continue there, and actually the dust is being slowly destroyed by the energy from the Pleiades star cluster. And in the meantime, we can see all of the structures that it gives to it. You can see filaments around the various sections of dust, so within that blue color, you can see various filaments that are forming as the energy of the Pleiades stars works to destroy the dust that is there, essentially pushing it away. So, the pressure of the light from the stars will repel that dust and eventually clear it out. Now, will it eventually completely destroy it, or will the dust have moved on since this dust is not directly associated with the Pleiades? Some of it may move on and survive this passing through this cluster, but the immense energy from those hot stars is actually shaping and forming the nebula that we see here, giving us all of those structures that we see within. So, that was our picture of the day for January 29th of 2024. It was titled, The Pleiades, Seven Dusty Sisters. We'll be back again tomorrow for the next picture, previewed to be to the Hyades. So, we'll see what that is about tomorrow. And until then, have a great day, everyone, and I will see you in class.