Since the release of the Hipparcos catalog in 1997 , the distance to the Pleiades open cluster has been heavily debated .
The distance obtained from Hipparcos and those by alternative methods differ by 10 to 15 % .
As accurate stellar distances are key to understanding stellar structure and evolution , this dilemma puts the validity of stellar evolution models into question .
Using our model–independent method to determine parallaxes based on twin stars , we report individual parallaxes of 15 FGK type stars in the Pleiades in anticipation of the astrometric mission Gaia .
These parallaxes give a mean cluster parallax of 7.42 \pm 0.09 ~ { } \mathrm { mas } corresponding to a mean cluster distance of { 134.8 \pm 1.7 ~ { } \mathrm { pc } } .
This value agrees with the current results obtained from stellar evolution models .