Still Image (From Earth) Animation (Distance Traveled: 48.9 light years)

Close-up of the Hyades, the famous star cluster in Taurus. Traveling 50 light years takes us almost halfway to the cluster, which soon dominates the left-hand portion of the image. Gliding past the cluster, it's possible to see depth in it -- it's a roughly spherical group of stars, rather than the flat-looking arrangement we perceive from Earth. Many other groups of stars like this exist in space, e.g., the Coma Berenices cluster and the Pleiades.