The Maori called them Matariki; to the Celts in Ireland they were Streoillín; their Hebrew name, Kimah, appears in the Bible multiple times. We call them by the same name the ancient Greeks did—the Pleiades, or “Seven Sisters”—a brilliant cluster of stars that captivated numerous cultures throughout antiquity. Now, thanks to new research published in The Astrophysical Journal, the sisterhood just got a lot bigger.
Around 440 light-years away, the Pleiades are just a short jaunt from Earth on an astronomical scale. They’re relatively young, too, formed when clouds of cosmic dust and gas collap