The celestial neighborhood where stars age like humans

Space · Published 30 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Look at the Pleiades and the Hyades to witness a timeline of stellar life. These clusters in Taurus represent different stages of maturity. While the Orion Nebula holds infant stars, the Pleiades act as teenagers and the Hyades as young adults, showing how stars age and move across our galaxy.

Located in the constellation Taurus, the Pleiades and Hyades serve as textbook examples of stellar evolution. While the Orion Nebula contains baby stars still-incubating protostars, and the gas from which they were born, the other two clusters represent different stages of maturity. The Pleiades are described as teenage stars, while the Hyades are young adult stars.

The Hyades are hundreds of millions of years old and have become widely dispersed, likened to young adults moving out of their hometowns into new apartments. Conversely, the Pleiades predate the Hyades while remaining more ancient than Orion's infant stars. These teenage stars are still relatively close together, having dispersed their birth cocoon of stellar gas but remaining in the same general neighborhood.

Determining the exact distance of the Pleiades has been a significant challenge in astrometry. The European Space Agency’s Hipparcos satellite once estimated the distance at about 392 light years, which was roughly 43 light years closer than previous estimates. However, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope later indicated a distance of 440 light years, and Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) calculated it at 443 light years. Recent data from the Gaia satellite suggests the distance is closer to the Hubble and VLBI values, potentially settling the long-running "Pleiades Controversy."

Observing these clusters provides a window into how stars move and age over millions of years. While the bright orange star Aldebaran appears to be part of the Hyades, it is actually a foreground object positioned between Earth and the cluster. By studying the spatial distribution and distances of these groups, astronomers can better understand the mechanics of how stellar nurseries transition into mature galactic structures.

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