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Location of Pleiades (circled) in the night sky The distance to the Pleiades can be used as a key first step to calibrate the cosmic distance ladder . As the cluster is relatively close to the Earth, the distance should be relatively easy to measure and has been estimated by many methods.
The poet Sappho mentions the Pleiades in one of her poems: The moon has gone The Pleiades gone In dead of night Time passes on I lie alone. The poet Lord Tennyson mentions the Pleiades in his poem "Locksley Hall": Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow shade, Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.
Pleiades seen with the naked eye (upper-left corner). [1]The high visibility of the star cluster Pleiades in the night sky and its position along the ecliptic (which approximates to the Solar System's common planetary plane) has given it importance in many cultures, ancient and modern.
Star map with the Pleiades (upper right) and the Hyades (centre, V-shaped head of the constellation Taurus with its main star Aldebaran, γ Tauri und ε Tauri (Ain)) at both sides of the ecliptic line (dashed red). The Golden Gate of the Ecliptic is an asterism in the constellation Taurus that has been known for several thousand years.
The Nebra sky disc, c. 1800–1600 BC. The Nebra sky disc (German: Himmelsscheibe von Nebra, pronounced [ˈhɪml̩sˌʃaɪbə fɔn ˈneːbra]) is a bronze disc of around 30 cm (12 in) diameter and a weight of 2.2 kg (4.9 lb), having a blue-green patina and inlaid with gold symbols.
Its name derives from الدبران al-dabarān, Arabic for "the follower", probably from the fact that it follows the Pleiades during the nightly motion of the celestial sphere across the sky. [11] [12] [13] Forming the profile of a Bull's face is a V or K-shaped asterism of stars.
In 210,000 years, Vega will become the brightest star in the night sky, [35] and will peak in brightness in 290,000 years with an apparent magnitude of –0.81. [35] This star lies at a vertex of a widely spaced asterism called the Summer Triangle, which consists of Vega plus the two first-magnitude stars Altair, in Aquila, and Deneb in Cygnus ...
Annotated night sky image showing Auriga and the Pleiades—Capella is the brightest star, towards top left With an average apparent magnitude of +0.08, Capella is the brightest object in the constellation Auriga , the sixth-brightest star in the night sky, the third-brightest in the northern celestial hemisphere (after Arcturus and Vega ), and ...