Astronomers just found the 'Greater Pleiades'—a star cluster way bigger than we thought
Turns out, the famous Pleiades star cluster is only the tip of the iceberg.
Astronomers discovered it's actually just the dense center of a much larger group—the Greater Pleiades Complex—which stretches nearly 2,000 light-years and is about 20 times bigger than anyone realized.
They spotted over 3,000 stars moving together, all sharing similar ages, using data from NASA's TESS and ESA's Gaia.
How did they figure this out?
The team used a cool trick: young stars spin fast while older ones slow down.
By tracking these spins (thanks to TESS) and mapping where each star is (with Gaia), they learned these stars are around 100 million years old and traveling as one giant family across space.
Why does it matter?
This changes how scientists think about how star clusters form—and even gives us new clues about where our own Sun came from.
The discovery paints a fresh picture of how groups of young stars grow up and drift apart in our galaxy.