The name given to a group of stars in the evening sky, a partial translation of Elvish Remmirath (which literally means 'host of netted jewels'). Given their description, and their placing in the sky near Menelvagor (Orion) the 'Netted Stars' are almost certainly the stars known in modern times as the Pleiades or Seven Sisters. These young blue stars are connected by trails of nebulous material, perhaps creating the 'net' from which they earned the name 'Netted Stars'.
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Magnified images of the stars of the Pleiades show them surrounded by wisps of nebulous material, which might indeed give the impression that they are held within some kind of mesh or net. It's unclear whether Tolkien intended to reference this level of astronomical detail, and his use of 'netted' for this cluster may simply be a poetical allusion to the fact that these stars appear to be bound closely together in the sky.
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- Updated 8 February 2016
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