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One of the most easily recognized constellations in the heavens is Taurus, The Bull, a zodiacal group which lies just south of the zenith in our latitudes in the early evening hours about the first of January.

Taurus is distinguished by the V-shaped group of The Hyades, which contains the bright, red, first-magnitude star Aldebaran, representing the fiery eye of the bull. It also contains the famous cluster of faint stars known as The Pleiades, lying a short distance northwest of The Hyades.

No group of stars is more universally known than The Pleiades. All tribes and nations of the world, from the remotest days of recorded history up to the present time, have sung the praises of The Pleiades. They were "The Many Little Ones" of the Babylonians, "The Seven Sisters" of the Greeks, "The Seven Brothers" of the American Indians, "The Hen and Chickens" of many nations of Europe, "The Little Eyes" of the South Sea Islanders. They were honored in the religious ceremonies of the Aztecs, and the savage tribes of Australia danced in their honor. Many early tribes of men began their year with November, the Pleiad month; and on November 17th, when The Pleiades crossed the meridian at midnight, it was said that no petition was ever presented in vain to the kings of ancient Persia.

January—Taurus

Poets of all ages have felt the charm of The Pleiades. Tennyson gives the following beautiful description of The Pleiades in Locksley Hall:

"Many a night I saw the Pleiades, rising through the mellow shade,

Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid."

A well-known astronomer, not so many years ago, also felt the mysterious charm of The Pleiades and seriously expressed the belief that Alcyone, the brightest star of The Pleiades, was a central sun about which all other suns were moving. But we know that there is no foundation whatever for such a belief.

A fairly good eye, when the night is clear and dark, will make out six stars in this group arranged in the form of a small dipper. A seventh star lies close to the star at the end of the handle and is more difficult to find. It is called Pleione, and is referred to in many legends as the lost Pleiad. Persons gifted with exceptionally fine eyesight have made out as many as eleven stars in the group; and with the aid of an ordinary opera-glass, anyone can see fully one hundred stars in this cluster. Astronomers have found that The Pleiades cluster contains at least two hundred and fifty stars, all drifting slowly in the same general direction through space, and that the entire group is enveloped in a fiery, nebulous mist which is most dense around the brightest stars. It is not known whether the stars are being formed from the nebula or whether the nebula is being puffed off from the stars. The brightest star, Alcyone, is at least two hundred times more brilliant than our own sun, and all of the brighter stars in the group surpass the sun many times in brightness. It is believed that this cluster is so large that light takes many years to cross from one end of it to the other, and that it is so far from the earth that its light takes over three centuries to reach us, traveling at the rate of 186,000 miles a second.

The Hyades is a group of stars scarcely less famous than The Pleiades, and the stars in the group also form a moving cluster of enormous extent at a distance of 140 light-years from the earth.

Among the ancients, The Hyades were called the rain-stars, and the word Hyades is supposed to come from the Greek word for rain. Among the many superstitions of the past was the belief that the rising or setting of a group of stars with the sun had some special influence over human affairs. Since The Hyades set just after the sun in the showery springtime and just before sunrise in the stormy days of late fall, they were always associated with rain. In Tennyson's Ulysses we read:

"Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Vex'd the dim sea."

The Hyades outline the forehead of Taurus, while two bright stars some distance to the northeast of the V form the tips of the horns. Only the head and forequarters of the bull are shown in the star-atlases that give the mythological groups, for, according to one legend, he is swimming through the sea and the rest of his body is submerged. According to another legend, Taurus is charging down upon Orion, The Warrior, represented by the magnificent constellation just to the southeast of Taurus, of which we shall have more to say next month.

Aldebaran is the Arabic word for "The Hindmost," and the star is so called because it follows The Pleiades across the sky. It is one of the most beautiful of all the many brilliant stars visible at this time and we might profit by following the advice of Mrs. Sigourney in The Stars:

"Go forth at night

And talk with Aldebaran, where he flames

In the cold forehead of the wintry sky."

Next to Aldebaran in the V is the interesting double star Theta, which we can see as two distinct stars without a telescope.

Directly south of Taurus is Eridanus, sometimes called Fluvius Eridanus, or The River Eridanus. Starting a little to the southeast of Taurus, close to the brilliant blue-white star Rigel in Orion, it runs to the westward for a considerable distance in a long curving line of rather faint stars, bends sharply southward for a short distance, then curves backward toward the east once more, and, after running for some distance, makes another sharp curve to the southwest and disappears below the southern horizon. Its course is continued far into the southern hemisphere. Its brightest star, Achernar, is a star of the first magnitude, but it lies below the horizon in our latitudes.

January—Eridanus

Eridanus contains no star of particular interest to us. Most of the numerous stars that mark its course are of the fourth and fifth magnitude. It contains but two stars of the third magnitude, one at the beginning of its course and one close to the southwestern horizon. The beautiful constellation of Perseus lies just to the north of Taurus and should rightfully be considered among the constellations lying nearest to the meridian in January, but we give this constellation among the star groups for December because of its close association with the nearby constellations Andromeda and Pegasus in legend and story.