Whether you’re watching the pickle drop in Mt. Olive, the acorn in Raleigh, or the ball drop in Times Square, take a moment to look up to the Pleiades on New Years Eve.
Also known as Messier 45 by astronomers, the Pleiades star cluster will be alongside a 90% full waxing gibbous Moon on Dec. 31, 2025, creating a striking pairing visible after dusk globally.
While the Moon is separated by less than a degree, or the width of your pinky on your outstretched hand, it’s only about a quarter million miles miles away. The Pleiades, also known as the “Seven Sisters,” is about 440 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus.
The light we see now from these stars left in 1585, as colonists were finishing their fort on Roanoke Island near what is now Manteo in Dare County.
You don’t need a telescope to spot the Pleiades, especially with the Moon as a guide this week. But a small telescope or binoculars can reveal details, even fainter stars within the constellation Taurus in the group than the main seven.
The stars within the Pleiades are named for the daughters of Pleione and Atlas in Greek mythology
Native American and other indigenous peoples’ star stories
Across cultures, the Pleiades have long captured human imagination. They are the celestial objects that are most commonly mentioned in ancient stories about the stars passed down, often orally, through generations. Some stories tell of origins while others pass on moral lessons.
- Kiowa and Lakota legends tell of seven young girls chased by giant bears. To escape, they climbed a rock that rose toward the sky, eventually transforming into stars. The deep grooves on Devils Tower in Wyoming (a centerpiece to 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind) are said to be the marks of the bears’ claws as they tried to reach the girls.
- The Cheyenne have a tale where the Pleiades began as seven puppies that became stars.
- The Iroquois tell of a group of seven boys who danced so energetically that they ascended to the sky.
- The Ojibwe name for the Pleiades translates to “Hole in the Sky,” seen as a sacred connection between Earth and the night sky.
- The Navajo noted what they call Dilyéhé as it was seen low in the dawn sky in the late summer as a guidepost for harvest.
- In Australian Aboriginal lore, the Pleiades are the Karatgurk — seven sisters who were the keepers of fire and a crow who tricked them into releasing the fire for all humanity to use.
- Many Aboriginal groups tell a “Seven Sisters Dreaming” story involving pursuit, law and survival, deeply embedded in cultural teachings about identity and behavior.
- We get the names for each star used today from Greek Mythology from the seven daughters of Titan Atlas and Pleione ( Maia, Elettra, Taygete, Alcyone, Celaeno, Asterope, Merope).
