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The Pleiades are absolutely stunning to the unaided eye. They're also known as "The Seven Sisters" (since many people can spot seven stars in the Pleiades from a dark sky), and as Subaru in Japanese. Yes, the car company's logo is a rendering of the stars in the Pleiades.

The Pleiades are an open cluster, i.e., a group of stars that formed from the same molecular cloud, so they are roughly the same age and distance from us. They are not necessarily bound gravitationally, so they may disperse over long periods of time. As a cluster, the Pleiades are exceptionally beautiful because the stars are surrounded by a dust cloud. Starlight is scattered by the dust, which gives the Pleiades their famous blue clouds. When you see blue in an astrophotograph, think dust. Dust scatters blue light very effectively, which also explains why the sky is blue.

One of the technical challenges in this picture is teasing the dust formations without letting the stars completely overexpose the image. I tried many different settings, and this is my favorite image.