If there is a space object I have always found incredibly beautiful is the star cluster of the Pleiades – alternatively called M45, or “The Seven Sisters”- immediately recognisable for the hot blue, luminous stars immersed in a nebula and visible to the naked eye in clear nights.
They are less near than they look like though, located as they are more than 400 light-years away in the Taurus constellation. They are easy to spot in the sky, just nearby the Orion Constellation.
Unsurprisingly, ancient cultures have been fascinated by their beauty just as much.
The Nebra sky disk, dated c. 1600 BC.
The Babylonians called them MulMul. In the Bronze Age they were already portrayed on artefacts (like the beautiful Nebra Sky Disk). The ancient Greeks had a few legends about the Pleiades. They named them after the Seven Sisters companions of Artemis, daughters of the titan Atlas and the sea-nymph Pleione – names we still use today.
During the Renaissance, Galilei observed them with his telescope (the first person of an endless series) and discovered that the stars were more than seven, but many of them too dim to be seen without instruments. A sketch of the Pleiades showing 36 stars, and his observations on them, have been published in 1610 in the Sidereus Nuncius.
Lord Alfred Tennyson had been fascinated by them as a young kid, later describing the stars in his verses “Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro’ the mellow shade, / Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid.”
But not just the Europens got under their spell: Japanese knew the Pleiades under the name Mutsuraboshi (six stars: in Western traditions are seven. One is deemed invisible) at least since the 8th century, and one Japanese corporation liked them so much to use them as an emblem.
You got it right: it is Subaru, which is, incidentally, also another Japanese name for the cluster.
Here some good images I have found on NASA, ESA and other repositories: enjoy!
A Spitzer infrared image of the Pleiades
Fascinating post, especially the mythic expkanations. If only all schoolkids could have access to dark skies and respectable telescopes, do you not think they’d be in awe of what swims beyond their immediate ken and perhaps have a little more perspective on science, not to forget Life, the Universe and everything? I would hope so.
You’re so right…! My love for astrophysics actually started in early school days, thanks to an amazing math teacher 😀