The Pleiadian Star Cluster

 
 
Lets see. . . the Pleiades, also known as M45,  are an open star cluster of about 1000 (some say 3000 now) new stars, that is dominated by seven very young hot bright blue stars that just formed relatively recently, as in the last 75-150 million years. (The earth, by contrast, is said to be 4.5 billion years old, or about 40 times older and more ancient than the Pleiades star cluster.) Fourteen stars are actually visible to the naked eye.
 
The cluster is 440 light years from earth, and is currently passing through a big dust cloud, which adds to the luminosity of those young stars, located in the constellation of Taurus, as the shoulder of the bull. 
 
The four biggest and brightest stars appear in a semi-square or rectangle formation similar to the container sections of the big or little dipper formations. Even the faintest stars in the cluster are about 40 times more luminous than our own sun.  The star Alcyone is about 100 times brighter than our sun.  There are not very many stars like our sun in the cluster, and the few that are there, appear as only faint pixels of light in good photographs and are almost impossibly hard to see.
 
 According to Greek Mythology, the cluster is named for the 'seven daughters' of Atlas and Pleione.  Although bright and close by, the named stars, Atlas and Pleione, are not actually part of the the 'seven sisters' of The Pleiades, but are their parents.  Many people today say they can only see 6, not 7 stars as in the days of old.  This may be beacuse the 7th brightest Pleiades star – Pleione – is a strange and complicated  “shell star” that goes through many unusual changes that causes it to vary in brightness.
 
The Aztecs are thought to have based their calendar system on the Pleiades. 
 
In Norse Mythology they are apparently referred to as Freya's hens (a cluster of butterflies).
 
The Pleiades  is mentioned once in the Bible: "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?"
 
The 'Halloween' festival apparently comes from an old Druid rite connected to the midnight rise of the Pleiades cluster.  Supposedly when the Pleiades reaches it's highest point in the sky - the veil of speration between the living in the material world, and the dead in the spiritual world, is at it's weakest or thinnest.

The Japanese term for the Pleiades, is reportedly 'Subaru.'  Fuji Heavy Industries adopted the 'Subaru' cluster of 6 visible stars as it's official corporate symbol for the automaker's line of cars.
 

http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2004-20-b-large_web.jpg   cool hubble image 

 
further reading/reference, named star maps, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades_(star_cluster)