Merope

Its story

Merope was the seventh Pleiad in Greek tradition, called «the lost one» because, according to the myth, she hid her face in shame for loving a mortal. It is a blue variable star, wrapped in dusty nebulosity that the cluster is currently passing through, visible in long-exposure photographs. At 380 light-years, its light set out in the seventeenth century, when that mythical image still being repeated in astronomy books was being coined.