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The cluster is slowly moving in the direction of the feet of what is currently the constellation of Orion. Like most open clusters, the Pleiades will not stay gravitationally bound forever. Some component stars will be ejected after close encounters with other stars; others will be stripped by tidal gravitational fields.
The Pleiades would "flee mighty Orion and plunge into the misty deep" as they set in the West, which they would begin to do just before dawn during October–November, a good time of the year to lay up your ship after the fine summer weather and "remember to work the land"; in Mediterranean agriculture autumn is the time to plough and sow.
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.
The asterism is formed of the two eye-catching open star clusters, the Pleiades and the Hyades that form the posts of a virtual gate on either side of the ecliptic line. Since all planets as well as the Moon and the Sun always move very closely along the virtual circle of the ecliptic, all these seven orbiting bodies regularly pass through the ...
The open clusters were hidden by the dust in the Milky Way. [6] Credit ESO. The prominent open cluster the Pleiades, in the constellation Taurus, has been recognized as a group of stars since antiquity, while the Hyades (which also form part of Taurus) is one of the oldest open clusters. Other open clusters were noted by early astronomers as ...
In Greek mythology, Merope / ˈ m ɛr ə p iː / [1] (Ancient Greek: Μερόπη) is one of the seven Pleiades, daughters of Atlas and Pleione. Pleione, their mother, is the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys and is the protector of sailors. [2] Their transformation into the star cluster known as the Pleiades is the subject of various myths.
Maia is the fourth-brightest star in the Pleiades open star cluster (Messier 45), after Alcyone, Atlas and Electra. It is surrounded by one of the brighter reflection nebulae within the Pleiades, designated NGC 1432 and sometimes called the Maia Nebula .
The lyric poet Simonides of Ceos (c. 556–468 BC), is the first (datable) source to connect the name of the star-cluster with the seven daughters of Atlas. [19] The names of the seven Pleiades are first attested in a scholion on Pindar, which quotes three hexameter lines from an unattributed poem, probably from the Hesiodic corpus: [20]