Pleiades star cluster is much bigger than we thought
Astronomers just found out the famous Pleiades star cluster isn't just those seven bright stars—it actually stretches much farther and includes thousands more hidden members.
Thanks to data from NASA's TESS and ESA's Gaia missions, researchers now say the cluster is about 20 times larger than anyone realized.
New methods reveal lost siblings
By measuring how fast each star spins (young ones spin faster), scientists could pick out which scattered stars are really part of the Pleiades family.
Combining this with super-precise location info from Gaia helped reveal a whole bunch of "lost" siblings that old-school methods missed.
Implications for understanding our galaxy
This changes how we see our galaxy—turns out, lots of star clusters might have way more distant relatives hiding in plain sight.
Figuring this out could even help us track down where our own Sun was born and better understand how the Milky Way came together.