Such a Buzzkill

I hate to burst your bubble, but while this is very pretty, in real life it wouldn't look anything like this.

First off, assuming this is supposed to be the Pleiades (based on the shape of the "beam ship"), you can't get close enough to the cluster for it to fill the sky to the degree shown in the artwork above and retain the same configuration it does when viewed from earth. In order for it to retain the same shape as seen from Earth, you'd have to be no closer than approximately 40 light years out from the nearest star in the cluster and at that distance it would appear only about half the size shown here. Any closer, and the relative positions of the stars start to shift so dramatically that the cluster quickly loses it's "tiny dipper" shape altogether.

Secondly, even with the stars of the Pleiades being extremely bright blue-white giants hundreds of time more luminous than our sun, at 40 light years out they still wouldn't cast shadows; they'd only be as bright as the brightest stars in Earth's night sky.  Hell…even if you're standing on a hypothetical planet orbiting one of the stars in the cluster, the brightest stars of the rest of the cluster would still be outshone by Venus in Earth's sky (currently seen in the west after sundown—go outside and take a look!) by an order of magnitude. Yeah, pretty, but they wouldn't cast shadows.

So science kills fantasy again. Almost as disappointing as when I learned that even if you're close to stellar nebulae you still wouldn't see the colors captured in those amazing shots from Hubble. (Another discussion for another time.)

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