Amateur captures ethereal blue veil around the Pleiades’ Seven Sisters

An amateur astrophotographer, Mark Germani, spent about 18 hours imaging the Pleiades open star cluster from Vancouver using an Askar SQA55 refractor and a UV/IR-cut filter. The resulting deep-space image shows dozens of blue-white stars amid surrounding blue reflection nebulas, a foreground dust veil the cluster is moving through. The Pleiades lies roughly 445 light-years away in Taurus and is nicknamed the "Seven Sisters" after its seven brightest stars.