By CLAIRE BATES

Last updated at 08:44 16 April 2007

One of the most beautiful family star clusters in the sky has been captured by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

The dazzling Seven Sisters are swaddled in a cushiony veil by clouds of dust and bathed in a green and orange light.

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The sisters, also known as the Pleiades, have been joined by Venus in the evening sky over the past three days. Star gazers can also expect to see the crescent moon between them on April 19th.

The star cluster in the Taurus constellation is 400 light years from earth, and was born when dinosaurs still roamed our planet, about 100 million years ago.

The 19th-century poet Alfred Lord Tennyson described them as "glittering like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid".