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The brightest stars of the cluster are named the Seven Sisters in early Greek mythology: Sterope, Merope, Electra, Maia, Taygeta, Celaeno, and Alcyone. Later, they were assigned parents, Pleione and Atlas. [18] As daughters of Atlas, the Hyades were sisters of the Pleiades. The following table gives details of the brightest stars in the cluster:
Maia / ˈ m eɪ ə /, designated 20 Tauri (abbreviated 20 Tau), is a star in the constellation of Taurus. It is a blue giant of spectral type B8 III, a chemically peculiar star, and the prototype of the Maia variable class of variable star. Maia is the fourth-brightest star in the Pleiades open star cluster (Messier 45), after Alcyone, Atlas ...
Alcyone / æ l ˈ s aɪ ə n iː /, [11] designated η Tauri (Eta Tauri, abbreviated Eta Tau, η Tau), is a star in the constellation of Taurus. Approximately 440 light-years from the Sun, it is the brightest star in the Pleiades open cluster, which is a young cluster, around 100 million years old. There are a number of fainter stars very close ...
There these seven stars formed the star cluster known thereafter as the Pleiades. The Greek poet Hesiod mentions the Pleiades several times in his Works and Days. As the Pleiades are primarily winter stars, they feature prominently in the ancient agricultural calendar. Here is a bit of advice from Hesiod:
After this, they were swept into the night sky. Their glowing fire sticks became the bright stars of the Pleiades cluster. [98] [99] The Wirangu people of the west coast of South Australia have a creation story embodied in a songline of great significance based on the Pleiades. In the story, the hunter (the Orion constellation) is named Tgilby ...
23 Tauri is the star's Flamsteed designation.The name Merope originates with Greek mythology; she is one of the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione known as the Pleiades.In 2016, the International Astronomical Union organized a Working Group on Star Names (WGSN) [21] to catalog and standardize proper names for stars.
Electra / ə ˈ l ɛ k t r ə /, [11] designated 17 Tauri, is a blue-white giant star in the constellation of Taurus located approximately 400 light years away. It is the third-brightest star in the Pleiades open star cluster (), visible to the naked eye with an apparent magnitude of 3.7.
In 1942 Otto Struve, one of the early researchers of Be Stars, stated that Pleione is "the most interesting member of the Pleiades cluster". [20] Like many of the stars in the cluster, Pleione is a blue-white B-type main sequence dwarf star with a temperature of about 11,000 K. It has a bolometric luminosity of 184 L ☉ assuming a distance of ...