Steve’s Virtual Planet

S.V.P. Star News - Pleaides

A recent measurement, made using radio telescopes, has resulted in a new determination of the distance to The Pleaides. The Pleiades, also know as M45, is a fairly close by open cluster. Its close enough such that the distance to it’s stellar members can be measured with different methods. So, multiple technigues lead to more accurate calibrations of those methods.

The new finding disputes the distance measurements to the Pleiades measured by ESA’s Hipparcos satellite is wrong. It seems that ground-based astronomers had it right all along.