* Astronomy

Matariki - Mori new year celebration
In the final days of May each year, a cluster of tiny stars intermittently twinkles as it rises on the north east horizon. To astronomers this constellation is known as Pleiades but to the Mori people of New Zealand, it is Matariki - a celestial signal of an ending and a beginning.

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In astronomy, the Pleiades are an open star cluster in the constellation of Taurus. It is among the nearest star clusters to Earth and is the cluster most obvious to the naked eye in the night sky. Pleiades has several meanings in different cultures and traditions.
The cluster is dominated by hot blue stars that have formed within the last 100 million years. Dust that forms a faint reflection nebulosity around the brightest stars was thought at first to be left over from the formation of the cluster (hence the alternate name Maia Nebula after the star Maia), but is now known to be an unrelated dust cloud in the interstellar medium that the stars are currently passing through. Astronomers estimate that the cluster will survive for about another 250 million years, after which it will disperse due to gravitational interactions with its galactic neighbourhood.