The California nebula (NGC 1499) and the Pleiades Star Cluster (M45), also known as the Seven Sisters, appear over an Euphorbia balsamifera (Balsam Spurge), a plant distributed from Arabian Peninsula to Sahara and Canary Islands, photographed here in La Palma, Canaries. The California Nebula is a huge cloud of gas, mainly hydrogen, which glows due to the ionization of the hydrogen gas by ultraviolet radiation from the star Xi Persei. The nebula takes its name from its resemblance to the outline of the state of the USA. Higher in the sky are the two neighboring spiral galaxies of the Milky Way, some 2.5 million light years away. The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) is on the upper left and the Triangulum Galaxy (M33) is the little cloud to its lower right.