It is classified as Be star with certain distinguishing traits: periodic phase changes and a complex circumstellar environment composed of two gaseous disks at different angles to each other.

[13] With an apparent magnitude of +5.05 in V, the star is rather difficult to make out with the naked eye, especially since its close neighbour Atlas is 3.7 times brighter and located less than 5 arcminutes away.

[note 2] Beginning in October of each year, Pleione along with the rest of the cluster can be seen rising in the east in the early morning before dawn.

Once late April arrives, the cluster can be spotted briefly in the deepening twilight of the western horizon, soon to disappear with the other setting stars.

[15] Pleione is classified as a Gamma Cassiopeiae type variable star, with brightness fluctuations that range between a 4.8 and 5.5 visual magnitude.

When the Hipparcos Catalogue was published in 1997, the new parallax measurement indicated a much closer distance of about 119±1.0 pc (388±3.2 ly), triggering substantial controversy among astronomers.

If the Hipparcos estimate were accurate, some astronomers contend, then stars in the cluster would have to be fainter than Sun-like stars—a notion that would challenge some of the fundamental precepts of stellar structure.

Interferometric measurements taken in 2004 by the Hubble Telescope's Fine Guidance Sensors and corroborated by studies from Caltech and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory showed the original estimate of 135 pc or 440 ly to be the correct figure.

The geometry and kinematics of this gaseous circumstellar environment are best explained by a Keplerian disk – one that is supported against gravity by rotation, rather than gas or radiation pressure.

Material in the disc is pulled back towards the star by gravity, but if it has enough energy it can escape into space, contributing to the stellar wind.

[30] As a result of such dynamics, Pleione exhibits prominent long-term photometric and spectroscopic variations encompassing a period of about 35 years.

[33] In 1996 a group of Japanese and French astronomers discovered that Pleione is a single-lined spectroscopic binary with an orbital period of 218.0 days and a large eccentricity of 0.6.

[35] Pleione was an Oceanid nymph of Mount Kyllene in Arkadia (southern Greece), one of the three thousand daughters of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys.

Each oceanid was thence a patroness of a particular body of water — be it ocean, river, lake, spring or even cloud — and by extension activities related thereto.

plêionê), meaning "more", "plenty", or "full"—a lexeme with many English derivatives like pleiotropy, pleomorphism, pleonasm, pleonexia, plethora and Pliocene.

'doves'), a reference to the sisters' mythical transformation by Zeus into a flock of doves following their pursuit by Orion, the giant huntsman, across the heavens.

[44] The illustration is from the famed space artist Chesley Bonestell and carries the caption: "Purple Pleione, a star of the familiar Pleiades cluster, rotates so rapidly that it has flattened into a flying saucer and hurled forth a dark red ring of hydrogen.

Some of the finest designs in racing yachts have the name Pleione,[45][46] and the recent Shanghai Oriental Art Center draws its inspiration from an orchid.