In the well known Pleiades star cluster, starlight is slowly
destroying this wandering cloud of gas and dust, known as IC
349. The star Merope lies just off the upper left edge of this
picture from the Hubble Space Telescope. In the past 100,000
years, part of the cloud has by chance moved so close to this
star—only 3,500 times the Earth-Sun distance—that the starlight
itself is having a very dramatic effect. Pressure of the star’s
light significantly repels the dust in the reflection nebula,
and smaller dust particles are repelled more strongly. As a
result, parts of the dust cloud have become stratified, pointing
toward Merope. The closest particles are the most massive and
the least affected by the radiation pressure. A longer-term
result will be the general destruction of the dust by the
energetic starlight. • Image Credit: NASA