Why the Pleiades Star Cluster Looks So Strange at First
To the naked eye, the Pleiades star cluster reads as a fuzzy little patch rather than a crisp group of stars. Most people can pick out around six points of light, although some observers can see seven or more under good conditions. Look directly at it and it seems to dim; glance slightly to one side and it sharpens. That trick of vision alone is enough to make someone think the light is doing something unusual.
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Near the horizon, the effect gets stronger. Air low in the sky shimmers and bends starlight, and a cluster sitting just above the treeline can appear to twinkle through a range of colours, blue, white, faint red. It genuinely looks like it is changing.
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Phone cameras make it worse. A long automatic exposure smears the points into blobs, and small lens
