dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd) (10/19/86)
The Pleiades, or Seven Sisters -- after this. October 19 The Merope Nebula If you look in the east in the evening sometime soon, you might notice a tiny dipper-shaped cluster of stars -- the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters. This cluster is so compact and so noticeable that it has been known about and written about since antiquity. One of the first star descriptions on record comes from ancient China -- a reference to the Pleiades in the year 2357 B.C. In classical Greece, the rise of the Pleiades in the east before dawn coincided with the beginning of good weather -- and thus the best time to sail the Mediterranean. As a result, the Pleiades were known as the Sailor's Star -- a name which stuck in Germany and England until recently. Again, the Pleiades looks like a tiny dipper -- now in the east each evening -- with probably only six stars visible to your naked eye. Many legends deal with the question of the whereabouts of the seventh sister. You might also notice that this littlest of little dippers looks hazy -- and indeed the Pleiades stars are wrapped in a veil of nebulosity. The brightest portion of this nebulosity envelopes the star Merope. That fact was first noticed on today's date, by the way, in the year 1859 -- by an observer using a 4-inch telescope. He said that the bright portion of the nebula near Merope looked like a faint stain of fog -- like the effect of "a breath on a mirror." The Merope nebula is now called by the very unromantic name of NGC 1435. It's visible to people with small telescopes. If you don't have a telescope, turn your binoculars on the Pleiades. Ordinary binoculars reveal many more stars in a very pretty pattern. Try it! Script by Deborah Byrd. (c) Copyright 1985, 1986 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin