The Moon approaches two star clusters on the evening of 26 January. Both clusters are located in Taurus and can be seen with the naked eye. Find the waxing Moon in the south-west, then look to its upper right to see a tight grouping of stars known as the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters. These stars all formed together some time within the last 100 million years. To the upper left is a more spread-out V-shaped cluster known as the Hyades. Roughly six times the age of the Pleiades, the Hyades is the closest star cluster to Earth, just 150 light years away. But don’t be fooled by the bright red star, Aldebaran – it is not part of the cluster. It just happens to lie along the same line of sight. The Sun was probably once a member of a star cluster. But at 4.6 billion years in age, its stellar siblings have long since dispersed.
•This article was amended on 22 January 2018 to correct the name of a constellation on the graphic
