Pleiades and Hyades Grace our Winter Skies

     In our night skies, only bright stars and star clusters get names. There are about 5000 stars visible to the naked eye, yet only a few hundred have names. There are even fewer star clusters with names. In our current night skies, there are two named star clusters visible to the unaided eye, the Pleiades and the Hyades.

    Both of these star clusters reside in the constellation Taurus the bull. The bull is visible most of the night and can easily be found near the bright constellation Orion. Orion has more bright stars than any other constellation in the night sky. It is somewhat shaped like an hourglass, with bright stars marking each corner and three bright stars traversing the middle. Orion is in the southeast sky
around 8PM.

     Taurus is above Orion and nearly overhead. The three brightest stars of Taurus form a narrow "v" shape, lying on its side above Orion. The brightest star in Taurus is Aldebaran. This yellow star marks the point of the "v." The cluster of stars surrounding Aldebaran are the Hyades. The Pleiades, known as the seven sisters, are a more compact cluster of stars, higher in the sky about 10 degrees from Aldebaran. You can estimate 10 degrees as the distance a fist held at arm's length takes up in the sky.

     There is a Native American legend which connects the Pleiades with the constellation of Ursa Major, the constellation in which the Big Dipper resides. The story tells about a shaman who sent his seven sons into the forest to learn how to interpret the meaning of the winds. The young men entered the forest and walked silently, listening to every sound of the wind. When night approached, they made a camp and prepared to sleep. Sometime during the night the oldest brother was awakened by a strange sound. The wind was singing. He could not understand the words but as he looked to the sky he saw a bright flickering light in the midst of the Pleiades. It startled the young man because the flickering was in time to the music of the winds and seems to be beckoning him. He awakened his brothers and they all listened to the windsong and they began to dance. The song became stronger and the dance more intense. Suddenly the brothers began to rise into the sky toward the flickering star in the Pleiades. The star was the youngest sister of the seven sisters who
made up the Pleiades, she had fallen in love with the young man named Mizar. Since then, Mizar and his love, given to him by the windsong, can be seen by those with sharp eyes in the handle of the Big Dipper.

    What makes this story so interesting is that it explains why there are only six stars visible in the Pleiades to the unaided eye.  Nearly all cultures refer to the Pleiades as the seven sisters! Alcor, the missing sister is the companion star to Mizar in the Big Dipper.

     These two star clusters are actually stellar nurseries, a birthplace for stars. Along astronomical timeliness, the Pleiades are very recent events, born after the dinosaurs were extinct on the Earth. The stars are very hot, giant stars and in stellar lives, bigger is not better. Larger stars live a fast paced life, burning through their fuel at an incredible rate. The newborn Pleiades will have lived
their lives and be in the last stages of stellar evolution before our Sun even begins to show signs of old age. Though planets may form around these stars, intelligent life will never have the chance to evolve.

     If you have access to binoculars or a small telescope, it is a breathtaking sight to behold the Pleiades. But if you miss seeing the Pleiades at night, you will likely get a chance to see this star cluster during the day. The Japanese word for Pleiades is Suburu, and the little star cluster is on the emblem of each one of these cars!