The early Arabs called it Al Jauz, the Walnut; Al Jauzah or Al Wasat, the Central One; and Al Na'ir, the Bright One; -- all of Al Thurayya. The later Al Achsasi added to this list Thaur al Thurayya, which, literally the Bull of the Pleiades, i.e., the Leading One, probably was a current title in his day, for his Italian contemporary Riccioli said, in his Astronomia Reformata, that the lucida "Alcinoe" was Altorich non Athorric. Hipparchos has been supposed to allude to it in his Oxus, and Oxutatos, ths Pleiados, the Bright One, and the Brightest One, of the Pleiad. Yet, in the face of these epithets, Ptolemy apparently did not mention it in the Syntaxis; while Baily, in his edition of Hyde's translation of Ulug Beg's Tables, affixed Flamsteed's 25 and Bayer's eta to the 32d star of Taurus, whichi s described as stella externa minuta vergiliarum, quae est ad lotus boreale, -- our Atlas.
In Babylonia it determined the 4th ecliptic constellation, Temennu, the Foundation Stone.
In India it was the junction star of the nakshatras Krittika and Rohint, and individual Amba, the Mother; while Hewitt says that in earlier Hindu literature it was Arundhati, wedded to Vashishtha, the chief of the Seven Sages, as her sisters were to the six other Rishis of Ursa Major; and that every newly married couple worshiped them on first entering their future home before they workshiped the pole-star. He thinks this is a symbol of the prehistoric union of the northern and southern tribes of India.
We often see the assertion that our title is in no way connected with Alkuon, the Halcyon, that "symbolic or mystical bird, early identified with the Kingfisher," the ornithological Alcedo or Ceryle; so that although the myth of of the Halcyon Days, that "element and temperate time, the nurse of the beautiful Halcyon,"
When birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave,is not yet understood, some of Thompson's conjectures as to its stellar aspect will be found interesting. He writes that
the story originally referred to some astronomical phenomenon, probably in connexion with the Pleiades, of which constellation Alcyone is the principal star. In what appears to have been the most vigorous period of ancient astronomy (not later than 2000 B.C., but continuing long afterwards to influence legend and nomenclature) the sun rose at the vernal equinox, in conjunction with the Pleiad, in the sign Taurus: the Pleiad is in many languages associated with bird-names ... and I am inclined to take the bird on the bull's back in coins of Eretria, Dicaea, and Thurii for the associated constellation of the Pleiad. ... Suidas definitely asserts that the Pleiades were called Alkuones. At the winter solstice, in the same ancient epoch, the Pleiad culminated at nightfall in mid-heaven. ... This culmination, between three and four months after the heliacal rising of the Pleiad in Autumn, was, I conjecture, symbolized as the nesting of the Halcyon. Owing to the antiquity and corruption of the legend, it is imopssible to hazard more than a conjecture; but that the phenomenon was in some form oan astronomic one I have no doubt.
Madler located in Alcyone the centre of the universe, but his theory has been shown to be fallacious. There is no satisfactory reason for his conclusion, and not much more for Miss Clerke's remarks as to the probably size and distance of Alcyone, -- that it shines to its sister stars with eighty-there times the lustre of Sirius in terrestrial skies, while its intrinsic brilliancy, as compared with that of the Sun, is 1000 times greater. All this rests upon the extremely doubtful assumption of a parallax of 0".013 deduced from the star's proper motion.
It culminates on the 31st of December.
The three little companions, easily visible with a low-power, form a beautiful triangle 3' away from Alcyone.
Ovid made use of Steropes sidus to symbolize the whole, but the present magnitudes would show that his star -- if, indeed, he referred to any special star at all, as is improbably -- was not ours, or else that a change in brilliancy has taken place. In fact, this also, and not without reason, has been called the Lost Pleiad.
Pleiades incipiunt umeros relevare paternos;for their setting relieved the father of some of his burden as bearer of the heavens.
With Pleione it marks the end of the handle of the Pleiad Dipper, and probably has a very minute, close companion, said to have been discovered by Struve in 1827, and again revealed, at an occultation by the moon, on the 6th of January, 1876.
It gives but one half the light of Taygete; still it can be seen with the naked eye, if a good one, and is so given in the Heis Verzeichniss.
Electra Trojae spectare ruinasor, as Hyginus wrote, left her place to be present at its fal, thence wandering off as a hair-star, or comet; or, reduced in brilliancy, settled down close to Mizar as Alophx, the Fox, the Arabs' Al Suha, and our Alcor. In the Harleian Manuscript the word is written Electa.
Non tulit ante oculos, opposuitque manum;
Ovid called her Atlantia, personifying the family.
The Pirt-Kopan-noot tribe of Australia have a legend of a Lost Pleiad, making this the queen of the other six, beloved by their heavenly Crow, our Canopus, and who, carried away by him, never returned to her hom.
She was the first-born and most beautiful of the sisters, and some have said that her star was the most luminous of the group; in fact, Riccioli, in his Almagestum Novum, distinctly wrote of Maia: dicta lucida Pleiadum & tertii honoris, quae mater Mercurii perhibetur, although in the Astronomia Reformata his "Alcinoe" is the lucida; so that we are uncertain which of these stars was the Pleias that he used for some one of the group. But the mythological importance of the goddess whose name Maia bears would indicate that Riccioli may have been correct as to the first of these identifications, and that the titles of th two stars perhaps should be interchanged.
The name also is written Mea and Maja, the feminine form of majus, an older form of magnus. Cicero had the word Majja, calling the Pleiad sanctissima, for in his day Maia was only another figure for the great and much named Rhea-Cybele, Fauna, Faula, Fatua, Ops, familiarly known as Ma, or Maia Maiestas, the Bona Dea, or Great and Fruitful Mother, who gave name to the Roman month, our May.
Ovid added to her title Pleias uda, the Moist Pleiad, as another symbol for the group; and Dante used her title for the planet Mercury, as the Atlantid was the mother of that god.
The equivalent
The nebula attached to this star, a part of the general nebulosity
that envelops the group, was first noticed in 1882 on photographs
by Pickering and the Messrs. Henry.
This star is enveloped in a faintly extended, triangular, nebulous
haze, visually discovered by Tempel in October, 1859; and there is a
small, distinct nebula, discovered by Barnard in November, 1890, close
by Merope, almost hidden in its radiance, although intrinsically very bright.
As the spectrum of this star shows the bright lines of hydrogen
like that of P Cygni, Pickering suggests that it may similarly have
had a temporary brilliancy and thus be the Lost Pleiad: a scientific
and -- if there has ever been in historic time a star in the cluster
that is now missing -- the most probable solution of this much
discussed question; so that the mother seems to have been lost, as
well as many of the daughters!
The Harleian Manuscript of Cicero's Aratos represents
the Sisters by plain female heads under the title VII Pliades et
Athlantides, and individually as Merope, Alcyone, Celaeno,
Electra, Ta Ygete, Sterope, and Maia.[1] Grotis has
them in the same way, but in far more attractive style, from the old
Leyden Manuscript, where we find the orthography Asterope and
Mea, the former of which, appearing in Germanicus, has become common
in our day. The German manuscript, dating from the 15th century,
shows seven full-length figures, the Dark Sister smaller than the
others, and wearing a dark-blue head-dress, the rest brighter in
color, with faces of true German type.
While this list includes all the named Pleiad stars, some
practically invisible without optical aid, yet every increase of power
reveals a larger number. Riccioli wrote about this in 1651:
While some of these undoubtedly are only optically connected with
the true Pleiades, yet the larger part seem to form a more or less
united group, which the spectroscope shows to be of the same general
type; this fact being first brought out by Harvard observers in 1886,
from comparisons of the spectra of forty of its stars. They are
supposed to be drifting together toward the south-southwest, and so
may be called a natural constellation.
Nicander wrote of them as olizonas, "the smaller ones";
Manilius, as tertia forma, "the third-sized"; and many think
that the light of some has decreased, not only from the legends of the
Lost Pleiad and the fact that some of the sisters' names are applied
to stars which could not possibly have been seen by the unaided eye,
but also because only six are now visible to the average observer, and
whoever can see seven can as readily see at least two more. Miss Airy
counted twelve; Mr. Dawes, thirteen; and Kepler said that his scholar
Michel Mostlin could distinguish fourteen, and had correctly mapped
eleven before the invention of the telescope, while others have done
about as well; indeed Carl von Littrow has seen sixteen. In the clear
air of the tropic highlands more of the group are visible than to us
in northern latitudes, -- from the Harvard observing station at
Arequipa, Peru, eleven being readily seen; so that Willis was
unconsciously right in his verses:
Discarding, of course, all the mythical explanations of the Lost
Pleiad, I would notice some of the modern and serious attempts at an
elucidation of the supposed phenomenon. Doctor Charles Anthon
considered it founded solely upon the imagination, and not upon any
accurate observation in antiquity. Jensen thinks that, as a favorite
object in Babylonia, the astronomers of that country attached to it,
with no regard to exactitude, their number of perfection or
completeness, 7 playing with them a more important part even than it
did among the Jews; thence it descended to Greece, where, its origin
being lost sight of, was caused the discrepancy which we cannot now
explain, as well as the legends and folk-lore on the subject. Lamb
asserted that the astronomers of Assyria could see in their sky seven
stars in the group, and so described them; but the Greeks, less
favorably situated, finding only six, invented the story of the
missing sister. Riccioli propounded a theory -- which I have nowhere
found adopted by any later writer -- that the seventh and missing
Pleiad mahy have been a nova appearing before that number was
recorded by observers, but extinguished about the date of the Trojan
war; the last idea accounting, too, for the association of Electra
with the lost one. Still another explanation is hinted at by Thompson
under Coma Berenices; and trhe really scientific theories of Smyth and
Pickering have already been noticed. It is in these last two, I
think, that the solution of this interesting question will be found,
if at all; and with the astronomers I would leave it, as perhaps I
ought to have done before.
Ptolemy mentioned Pleias for only four stars in
Tanros that Baily said were Flamsteed's 18, 19, 23, and 27,
our Alcyone singularly being disregarded, as well as four others of
our named stars; and Al Sufi, who revised Ptolemy's observations,
stated that this "Alexandrian Quartette" also were brightest in his
day -- the 10th century. But Ulug Beg, although he is supposed to
have followed Ptolemy, applied "Al Thurayya" to the five that Baily
said were Fl. 19, 23, 21, 22, and 25 (Alcyone). Baily himself,
editing Hyde's translation of Ulug Beg, gave only Fl. 19 asnd 23 as of
"Al Thuraja."
Recent photograhpic observations have revelead nebulous matter, in
different degrees of condensation, scattered throughout the cluster,
connecting its various members; while Barnard in 1894 found vast
nebulosity extending almost as far as Zeta Persei.
The Pleiades afford so convincing a proof of the popular
misapprehension as to the moon's apparent magnitude that I am tempted
to introduce another illustration drawn from these stars. The angular
distance between Alcyone and Electra and between Merope and Taygeta is
greater by several minutes than the mean angular diameter of the
moon's disc, -- 31' 7", -- so that the latter could be inserted within
the quadrangle formed by those four stars with plenty of room to
spare; although in looking at the cluster the impression is that our
satellite would cover the whole. An occultation of the Pleiades by
the moon gives a vivid realization of this fact; and as this is a not
infrequent phenomenon, I commend its observation to any unbeliever.
Ulug Beg applied to it Al Wasat, the Central One,
usually and more appropriately given to Alcyone.
Bayer lettered it q, describing it as Pleiadum
minima; but the Century Cyclopaedia's epsilon is a misprint
for e.
Merope
23 Tau, SAO 76172, HD 23480, magnitude 4.18, spectral type B6 IVe.
Thy wedlock won.
Elizabeth Worthington Fiske.Pleione
28 Tau, SAO 76229, HD 23862, magnitude 5.09iv, spectral type B8 IVe (variable).
Jungitur, ut fama est, Pleiadasque parit.
Ovid's Fasti.
Telescopio autem spectatae visae sunt Galileo plus quam 40. ut
narratur in Nuncio Sidereo;
a first-rate field-glass, taking in 3 1/4 degrees and magnifying
seven diameters, shows 57; Hooke, in 1664, saw 78 with the best
telescope of his day; Swift sees 300 with his 4 1/2-inch, and 600 with
his 16-inch; and Wolf catalogued, at the Paris Observatory in 1876,
625 in a space of 90' by 135'. But with the camera the Messrs. Henry
photograhped 1421 in 1885, and two years later, by a four-hours'
exposure, 2326 down to the 16th magnitude within three square degrees,
-- more than are visible at any one time by the naked eye in the whole
sky. And a recent photograph by Bailey, with the Bruce telescope,
reveals 3972 stars in the region 2 degrees square around Alcyone;
although there is no certainty that all of those belong to the
Pleiades group. Statements as to their magnitudes and distances make
many of them exceed Sirius in size, and to be 250 light years away;
but these are based upon an assumption of a parallax as yet only
hypothetical. But, if correct, how appropriate are Young's verses in
his Night Thoughts:
How distant some of these nocturnal Suns!
and Longfellow's stanza in his Ode to Charles Sumner:
So distant (says the Sagfe) 'twere not absurd
To doubt, if Beams set out at Nature's Birth,
Are yet arrived at this so foreign World
Tho' nothing half so rapid as their Flight;
Were a star quenched on high,
For ages would its light,
Still travelling downward from the sky,
Shine on our mortal sight.
the linked Pleiades
Smyth wrote:
Undimm'd are three, though from the sister band
The fairest has gone down; and South away!
If we admit the influence of variability at long periods, the seven in
number may have been more distinct, so that while Homer and Attalus
speak of six, Hipparchus and Aratus may properly mention seven.
Yet, we find Humboldt, in Cosmos, saying that Hipparchos
refuted the assertion of Aratos that only six are to be seen with the
naked eye, and that
One star escaped his attention, for when the eye is attentively fixed
on this constellation, on a serene and moonless night, seven stars are
visible.
But Aratos' words do not justify this statement as to his opinion. He
wrote:
seven paths aloft men say they take,
this "seven paths," eptaporoi, being first found in the
Phsos attributed to Euripides. Erastothenes called it
Pleias eptasteros, the Seven-starred Pleiad, although he
described one as Panafanhs, All-invisible; Ovid repeated from
the Phainomena the now trite
Yet six alone are viewed by mortal eyes.
From Zeus' abode no star unknown is lost
Since first from birth we heard, but thus the tale is told;
Quae septem dici, sex tamen esse solent;
and again:
Six only are visible, but the seventh is beneath the dark clouds.
Cicero thought of them in the same way, and Galileo wrote Dico
autem sex, quando quidem septima fere nunquam apparet. But the
early Copts knew them as Exastron, the Six-starred Asterism,
and many Hindu legends mention only six.Taygeta
20 Tau, SAO 76140, HD 23338, magnitude 4.30v, spectral type B6 IV.
as soon as the Pleiad Taygete has displayed her comely face to the
earth, and spurns with her foot the despised waters of the ocean; or
when the same star, flying the constellation of the watery Fish,
descends in sadness from the sky into the watery waves.
A 7 sisters production.