Star clusters. Optical image of the Hyades (lower left) and Pleiades (M45, upper right) open star clusters in the zodiacal constellation Taurus, the bull. North is at top. The bright orange star is Aldebaran (Alpha Tauri), which is a foreground star and is not part of the Hyades cluster. The Hyades is a cluster of young stars which lies around 130 light years from Earth. Its stars are thought to be around 400 million years old. The Pleiades is an even younger cluster. Its stars are swathed in nebulosity, thought to be the remnants of the gas cloud from which they formed some 50 million years ago.