Pleiades star cluster is a bit farther away than thought
Guest post by Christopher Crockett
The Pleiades, a cluster of young stars in the constellation Taurus, is 444 light-years away, astronomers report in the Aug. 29 Science. New radio telescope observations confirm what many have long suspected: the previous distance determined by the European Space Agency satellite Hipparcos was about 10 percent too close.
The new measurements resolve one debate but start another: what went wrong before? The answer could be crucial for the recently launched Gaia satellite, which in August started its five-year mission to create a three-dimensional map of nearly 1 billion stars in the galaxy.
Original post found here:
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/pleiades-star-cluster-bit-farther-away-thought
The Pleiades, a cluster of young stars in the constellation Taurus, is 444 light-years away, astronomers report in the Aug. 29 Science. New radio telescope observations confirm what many have long suspected: the previous distance determined by the European Space Agency satellite Hipparcos was about 10 percent too close.
The new measurements resolve one debate but start another: what went wrong before? The answer could be crucial for the recently launched Gaia satellite, which in August started its five-year mission to create a three-dimensional map of nearly 1 billion stars in the galaxy.
Original post found here:
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/pleiades-star-cluster-bit-farther-away-thought
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