The Hyades and Pleiades

The Hyades

THE HYADES AND PLEIADES
THE HYADES

Who hears not of the Hyades, sprinkling his forehead o’er?

ARATOS.

THE “V”-shaped group of stars in the constellation Taurus is known as “the Hyades,” and has attracted the attention of all mankind. Its stars outline the face of the fierce Bull that lowers its massive head to gore the giant hunter Orion, and the ruddy first magnitude star Aldebaran, the lucida of the group, marks the eye of the enraged creature.

According to Allen the Greeks knew this star cluster as ‘Υαδες, which became Hyades with the cultured Latins, a title supposed by some to be derived from ετν, “to rain,” referring to the wet period attending their morning and evening setting in the latter parts of May and November, and this is their universal character in the literature of all ages.

The poets call these stars the “rainy Hyades” or the “watery Hyades.” Thus Horace in his ode to the ship bearing Virgil to Greece sings:

In oak or triple brass his breast was mailed
Who first committed to the ruthless deep
His fragile skiff ...
Nor feared to face the tristful Hyades.

Manilius refers to them as “sad companions of the turning year.”

Pliny called them collectively “a violent and troublesome star, causing storms and tempests raging both on land and sea.”

Spenser thus describes their setting:

And the moist daughters of huge Atlas strove
Into the ocean deepe to drive their weary drove.

Virgil alludes to them as “ the rainy Hyades,” and Tennyson in his Ulysses wrote:

Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades vext the dim sea.

So we find them treated consistently, and always identified with a rainy period of weather.

The Romans thought that the Greek name Hyades was derived from ες, meaning sows, so they called these stars “suculæ” or little sows, and owing to this error much confusion has arisen. Pliny accounts for the title by the fact that the continued rains of the season of the setting of the Hyades made the roads so miry that these stars seemed to delight in dirt like swine. This explanation, however, seems far fetched.

Isidorus claimed that the title “suculæ” was derived from “sucus,” meaning moisture, which idea fits in very well with the watery traditions that have always surrounded this group of stars.

Some authorities derived the name of this group from the letter “Y,” to which its form bears a resemblance, though the stars are grouped more in the shape of the letter “V.”

The Hyades have also been called “a Torch,” “a Triangular Spoon,” and “the Little She Camels,” the large camel being represented by the star Aldebaran.

The Hindus saw here a temple or waggon, the Chinese, a hand-net, or rabbit-net, but the latter generally called the group “the Star of the Hunter” or “the Announcer of Invasion on the Border.” They worshipped these stars as “the General or Ruler of Rain,” from at least 1100 B.C.

According to Grimm the Hyades were regarded as “the Boar Throng” among the Anglo-Saxons.

In mythology the group were supposed to be the daughters of Atlas, and half-sisters of the Pleiades. They were changed into stars on account of their grief for the death of their brother Hyas.

According to another story they were the nurses of the infant Bacchus, and the father of the gods rewarded them for their faithful service by placing them among the stars. Originally they were supposed to be seven in number. Hesiod named five, and we now regard the group as containing six stars. The Hyades are among the few stellar objects mentioned by Homer.

Aldebaran, or Alpha Tauri, the lucida of the group, rises an hour later and almost directly under the celebrated star cluster known as the Pleiades, and its name indicates the fact, meaning “the hindmost” or “the follower.”

Mrs. Martin, in The Friendly Stars, gives us the following facts concerning this beautiful star: “Aldebaran is the fourteenth star in order of brightness in the entire heavens, and the ninth among those seen in our latitude. It is what is known as a standard first magnitude star. It gives us about one ninety billionth as much light as the sun, but at the same distance as the sun we would get from it forty-five times as much light as the sun gives us. It requires something more than thirty-two years for the light of Aldebaran to reach the earth, which means that it is nearly two hundred trillions of miles away. It is increasing this distance at the rate of about thirty miles a second but even at this rate it will require more than ten thousand years to add another trillion of miles to its distance.”

Its red hue indicates that Aldebaran is one of the older stars, one of the suns that like a dying ember still glows persistently as if in anger at the loss of its pristine glory and the thought of its declining power.

According to Prof. Russell the Hyades are receding from us at the rate of twenty-five miles a second, and on the average its stars are about one hundred and twenty light years distant. At this distance our sun would appear as a telescopic eighth magnitude star.

The group is exceedingly rich in double stars, and viewed even in a small telescope with a low power presents a beautiful appearance.

Serviss thus mentions the group: “The beauty of Aldebaran, the singularity of the figure shaped by its attendants, the charming effect produced by the flocks of little stars, the Deltas and the Thetas, in the middle of the arms of the letter, and the richness of the stellar groundwork of the cluster, all combine to make the Hyades one of the most memorable objects in the sky; but no one can describe it, because the starry heavens cannot be put into words.”