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[Middle English Pliades, from Latin Plēïades, from Greek Plēiades.]
For more information on Pleiades, visit Britannica.com.
The Pleiades is a star cluster an approximately 400 light-year distance from Earth and near the constellations of Orion and Taurus in the night sky. The cluster includes seven bright stars that are easily seen with the naked eyes. In more recent years, astronomers equipped with telescopes have found the cluster to contain some 400 stars and to be surrounded by a nebula. As with many of the heavenly bodies, the Pleiades has attracted the speculation of people who have imposed a mythological significance on the objects seen in the night sky. And such speculations have not been limited to prescientific cultures. Early in the twentieth century, the leader of the group later known as the Jehovah's Witnesses suggested that one of the stars of the Pleiades was actually the throne of the Lord God Jehovah.
In ancient Greece, the seven prominent stars were named after the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione. Atlas, a titan who warred against the gods, was condemned by Zeus to hold up the heavens on his shoulders. His daughters were named Alcyone, Asterope, Celaeno, Electra, Maia, Merope, and Taygete. Each has her own story from the mythological cycles.
Pleiades, largely a concern for the astronomical community in recent centuries, broke into the news in 1975 when Eduard Albert "Billy" Meier, the leader of a small metaphysical study group in his native Switzerland, announced that he had seen a saucer-shaped craft land and had communicated with its pilot, a woman named Semjase. Semjase claimed to reside on a planet in the Pleiades. Having discovered Earth in the distant past, some Pleiadians settled here and intermarried. The peace-loving Semjase was part of a group who were attempting to assist humanity out of its warlike tendencies. Meier claimed that Semjase allowed him to take pictures of the Pleiadian spacecraft, called beam ships, and that he even took a trip to the Pleiades himself. While the photographs were the most important aspect of the Meier contact claims, he also asserted that he had telepathic contacts with Semjase.
A first volume of photographs and an outline of the Meier story was published in English in 1979, and a number of additional books appeared over the next few years as ufologists debated the pros and cons of the Meier pictures. American inventor Fred Bell also claimed to have been in touch and received a variety of technological information from Semjase. But, although Meier received much support, mainstream ufologists denounced him. Kal K. Kroff authored two books condemning him as a hoaxer. Kroff's attacks on Meier were countered by Meier's supporters with more than a dozen books, illustrated with his many photos of the spaceships, and several video tapes. Together they made the Pleiades a well-known item within the lay community of people interested in flying saucers.
Beginning in the late 1980s, channelers (mediums), people who receive information from various extrasensory sources, appeared within the larger New Age community and claimed that they were channeling material from Pleiadians. The results of these contacts began to appear in 1991 with Jani King 's book, The P'taah Tapes: Transmissions from the Pleiades. It was followed the next year by possibly the most influential volume, Barbara Marciniak 's Bringers of the Dawn: Teachings from the Pleiadians. Additional Pleiadian contactees include Amorah Quan Yin, Nina Jenice, Susan Drew, Barbara Hand Clow, and Lyssa Royal, whose channeled material appears regularly in the monthly magazine of channeled material, Sedona: A Journal of Emergence. In 1996 Preston Nichols, the man who made some extraordinary claims concerning his secret work on a U.S. government project with mind control, materialization, and weather control known as the Montauk Project, revealed that he had also taken a trip to the Pleiades on a spaceship.
Together these New Age Channelers have led in the development of that segment of the New Age community who look to extraterrestrials as the source of the teaching material they are releasing.
Sources:
Amorah Quan Yin. Pleiadian Perspectives on Human Evolution. Santa Fe, N.Mex.: Bear & Co., 1996.
——. The Pleiadian Workbook. Santa Fe, N.Mex.: Bear & Co., 1996.
Bell, Fred. Rays of Truth-Crystals of Light. Blue Hill, Maine: Medicine Bear Publishing, 1999.
Clark, Jerome. UFO Encyclopedia. 2 vols. 2nd ed. Detroit: Omnigraphics, 1998.
Klimo, Jon. Channeling: Investigations on Receiving Information from Paranormal Sources. Rev. ed. Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1998.
Nichols, Preston B., and Peter Moon. Encounter in the Pleiades: An Inside Look at UFOs. New York: Sky Books, 1996.
Rutherford, J. F. Reconciliation. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 1917.
Winters, Randolph. The Pleiadian Mission: A Time of Awareness. Atwood, Calif.: The Pleiades Project, 1994.
A Hubble Space Telescope (HST) image of the Pleiades . |
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| Observation data: J2000 epoch | |
|---|---|
| Constellation: | Taurus |
| Right ascension: | 3h 47m 24s[1] |
| Declination: | +24° 7′[1] |
| Distance: | 440 ly (135 pec[2][3]) |
| Apparent magnitude (V): | |
| Apparent dimensions (V): | |
| Notable features: | |
| Other designations: | M45,[1] Seven Sisters[1] |
| See also: Open cluster, List of open clusters | |
The Pleiades (Ple.ia.des |[ˈpli.ə.diz]) - also known as M45, the Seven Sisters, or Subaru (in Japan) - is the name of an open cluster in the constellation of Taurus. It is among the nearest to the Earth of all open clusters, probably the best known and certainly the most striking to the naked eye. This asterism is sometimes referred to as the Maia Nebula, perhaps erroneously considering that the reflection nebulosity surrounding Maia is extrinsic (see below).
The cluster is dominated by hot blue stars, which have formed within the last 100 million years. Dust that forms faint reflection nebulosity around the brightest stars was thought at first to be left over from the formation of the cluster but is now known to be an unrelated dust cloud that the stars are currently passing through. Astronomers estimate that the cluster will survive for about another 250 million years, when it will have dispersed due to gravitational interactions with the spiral arms of the galaxy and giant molecular clouds.
The Pleiades are a prominent sight in winter in the Northern Hemisphere and in
They have long been known to be a physically related group of stars rather than any chance alignment. The Reverend John Michell calculated in 1767 that the probability of a chance alignment of so many bright stars was only 1 in 500,000, and so correctly surmised that the Pleiades and many other clusters of stars must be physically related.[4] When studies were first made of the stars' proper motions, it was found that they are all moving in the same direction across the sky, at the same rate, further demonstrating that they were related.
Charles Messier measured the position of the cluster and included it as M45 in his catalogue of comet-like objects, published in 1771. Along with the Orion Nebula and the Praesepe cluster, Messier's inclusion of the Pleiades has been noted as curious, as most of Messier's objects were much fainter and more easily confused with comets—something which seems scarcely possible for the Pleiades. One possibility is that Messier simply wanted to have a larger catalogue than his scientific rival Lacaille, whose 1755 catalogue contained 42 objects, and so he added some bright, well-known objects to boost his list.[5]
The distance to the Pleiades is an important first step in the so-called cosmic distance ladder, a sequence of distance scales for the whole universe. The size of this first step calibrates the whole ladder, and the scale of this first step has been estimated by many methods. As the cluster is so close to the Earth, its distance is relatively easy to measure. Accurate knowledge of the distance allows astronomers to plot a Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram for the cluster which, when compared to those plotted for clusters whose distance is not known, allows their distances to be estimated. Other methods can then extend the distance scale from open clusters to galaxies and clusters of galaxies, and a cosmic distance ladder can be constructed. Ultimately astronomers' understanding of the age and future evolution of the universe is influenced by their knowledge of the distance to the Pleiades.
Results prior to the launch of the Hipparcos satellite generally found that the Pleiades were about 135 parsecs away from Earth. Hipparcos caused consternation among astronomers by finding a distance of only 118 parsecs by measuring the parallax of stars in the cluster—a technique which should yield the most direct and accurate results. Later work has consistently found that the Hipparcos distance measurement for the Pleiades was in error, but it is not yet known why the error occurred.[6] The distance to the Pleiades is currently thought to be the higher value of about 135 parsecs.[2][3]
The cluster core radius is about 8 light years and tidal radius is about 43 light years. The cluster contains over 1000 statistically confirmed members, although this figure excludes unresolved binary stars.[7] It is dominated by young, hot blue stars, up to 14 of which can be seen with the naked eye depending on local observing conditions. The arrangement of the brightest stars is somewhat similar to Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. The total mass contained in the cluster is estimated to be about 800 solar masses.[8]
The cluster contains many brown dwarfs, which are objects with less than about 8% of the Sun's mass, not heavy enough for nuclear fusion reactions to start in their cores and become proper stars. They may constitute up to 25% of the total population of the cluster, although they contribute less than 2% of the total mass.[9] Astronomers have made great efforts to find and analyse brown dwarfs in the Pleiades and other young clusters, because they are still relatively bright and observable, while brown dwarfs in older clusters have faded and are much more difficult to study.
Also present in the cluster are several white dwarfs. Given the young age of the cluster normal stars are not expected to have had time to evolve into white dwarfs, a process which normally takes several billion years. It is believed that, rather than being individual low- to intermediate-mass stars, the progenitors of the white dwarfs must have been high-mass stars in binary systems. Transfer of mass from the higher-mass star to its companion during its rapid evolution would result in a much quicker route to the formation of a white dwarf, although the details of this supposed transfer from a deeper gravity well to a lesser are unexplained.
Ages for star clusters can be estimated by comparing the H-R diagram for the cluster with theoretical models of stellar evolution, and using this technique, ages for the Pleiades of between 75 and 150 million years have been estimated. The spread in estimated ages is a result of uncertainties in stellar evolution models. In particular, models including a phenomenon known as convective overshoot, in which a convective zone within a star penetrates an otherwise non-convective zone, result in higher apparent ages.
Another way of estimating the age of the cluster is by looking at the lowest-mass objects. In normal main sequence stars, lithium is rapidly destroyed in nuclear fusion reactions, but brown dwarfs can retain their lithium. Due to lithium's very low ignition temperature of 2.5 million kelvins, the highest-mass brown dwarfs will burn it eventually, and so determining the highest mass of brown dwarfs still containing lithium in the cluster can give an idea of its age. Applying this technique to the Pleiades gives an age of about 115 million years.[10][11]
The cluster's relative motion will eventually lead it to be located, as seen from Earth many millennia in the future, passing below the feet of what is currently the constellation of Orion. Also, like most open clusters, the Pleiades will not stay gravitationally bound forever, as some component stars will be ejected after close encounters and others will be stripped by tidal gravitational fields. Calculations suggest that the cluster will take about 250 million years to disperse, with gravitational interactions with giant molecular clouds and the spiral arms of the galaxy also hastening its demise.
Under ideal observing conditions, some hint of nebulosity may be seen around the cluster, and this shows up in long-exposure photographs. It is a reflection nebula, caused by dust reflecting the blue light of the hot, young stars.
It was formerly thought that the dust was left over from the formation of the cluster, but at the age of about 100 million years generally accepted for the cluster, almost all the dust originally present would have been dispersed by radiation pressure. Instead, it seems that the cluster is simply passing through a particularly dusty region of the interstellar medium.
Studies show that the dust responsible for the nebulosity is not uniformly distributed, but is concentrated mainly in two
layers along the line of sight to the cluster. These layers may have been formed by deceleration due to radiation pressure as the
dust has moved towards the stars.[12]
The nine brightest stars of the Pleiades are named for the Seven Sisters of Greek mythology: Sterope, Merope, Electra, Maia, Taygete, Celaeno and Alcyone, along with their parents Atlas and Pleione. As daughters of Atlas, the Hyades were sisters of the Pleiades. The English name of the cluster itself is of Greek origin, though of uncertain etymology. Suggested derivations include: from πλεîν plein, to sail, making the Pleiades the "sailing ones"; from pleos, full or many; or from peleiades, flock of doves. The following table gives details of the brightest stars in the cluster:
| Name | Pronunciation (IPA & respelling) | Designation | Apparent magnitude | Stellar classification |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alcyone | /æl'saɪəni/, al-sye'-ə-nee | Eta (25) Tauri | 2.86 | B7IIIe |
| Atlas | /'ætləs/, at'-ləs | 27 Tauri | 3.62 | B8III |
| Electra | /i'lɛktrə/, ee-lek'-trə | 17 Tauri | 3.70 | B6IIIe |
| Maia | /'meɪə, 'maɪə/; may'-ə, mye'-ə | 20 Tauri | 3.86 | B7III |
| Merope | /'mɛrəpi/, mair'-ə-pee | 23 Tauri | 4.17 | B6IVev |
| Taygeta | /tei'ɪʤəti/, tay-ij'-ə-tee | 19 Tauri | 4.29 | B6V |
| Pleione | /'plaɪəni/, plye'-ə-nee | 28 (BU) Tauri | 5.09 (var.) | B8IVep |
| Celaeno | /sə'lino/, sə-lee'-no | 16 Tauri | 5.44 | B7IV |
| Asterope | /ə'stɛrəpi/, ə-stair'-ə-pee | 21 and 22 Tauri | 5.64;6.41 | B8Ve/B9V |
| — | — | 18 Tauri | 5.65 | B8V |
| “ | Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades? Can you loose the cords of Orion? |
” |
|
— Job
38:31
|
The Pleiades' high visibility in the night sky has guaranteed it a special place in many cultures, both ancient and modern. In Greek mythology, they represented the Seven Sisters, while to the Vikings, they were Freyja's hens, and their name in many old European languages compares them to a hen with chicks.
To the Bronze Age people of Europe, such as the Celts (and probably considerably earlier), the Pleiades were associated with mourning and with funerals, since at that time in history, on the cross-quarter day between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice (see Samhain, also Halloween or All Souls Day), which was a festival devoted to the remembrance of the dead, the cluster rose in the eastern sky as the sun's light faded in the evening. It was from this acronychal rising that the Pleiades became associated with tears and mourning. As a result of precession over the centuries, the Pleiades no longer marked the festival, but the association has nevertheless persisted, and accounts for the significance of the Pleiades astrologically.
The early Monte Alto Culture and others in Guatemala such as Ujuxte and Takalik Abaj, made its early observatories, using the Pleiades and Eta Draconnis as reference, they were called the seven sisters, and thought to be their original land.[13]
Heliacal risings very often mark important calendar points for ancient peoples.[14] The heliacal rising of the Pleiades (around June) also begins the new year for the Māori of New Zealand, who call the Pleiades Matariki. There is an analogous holiday in
Depending on the tribe or clan, some Indigenous Australian peoples believed the Pleiades was a woman who had been nearly raped by Kidili, the man in the moon.
Another version, often painted by Gabriella Possum Nungurayyi as this is her dreaming (or creation story), daughter of the late Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri from the Central desert art movement of Papunya, depicts the story of seven Napaltjarri sisters being chased by a man named Jilbi Tjakamarra. He would practice love magic to seduce the sisters but they had no intention of being with him and ran away. They sat down at Uluru to search for honey ants but when they saw Jilbi, they went to Kurlunyalimpa and with the spirits of Uluru, transformed into stars. Jilbi transforms himself into what is commonly known as the Morning Star in Orion's belt [citation needed], thus continuing to chase the seven sisters across the sky. (Source:Aboriginal Fine Art Gallery)
The Sioux of North America had a legend that linked the origin of the Pleiades to Devils Tower. According to the Seris (of northwestern Mexico), these stars are seven women who are giving birth. The constellation is known as Cmaamc, which is apparently an archaic plural of the noun cmaam "woman".[15]
It was common among the indigenous peoples of the Americas to measure keenness of vision by the number of stars the viewer could see in the Pleiades, a practice which was also used in historical Europe, especially in Greece.
The Native American tribe, the Kiowa, had a myth similar to the Sioux that explained the creation of the Pleiades. According to the Kiowa there were seven young maidens that went out to play and were spotted by several giant bears. The bears saw the young women and began to chase them. In an effort to escape the bears the women climbed on top of a rock and prayed to the spirit of the rock to save them. Hearing their prayers the rock began to rise from the ground towards the Heavens so that the bears couldn't reach the maidens. The seven women reached the sky and were then turned into the star constellation we know today. The bears in an effort to climb the rock left deep claw marks in the sides which had become too steep to climb. The rock later became known as Devil's Tower which is located in the state of Wyoming.[citation needed]
In the ancient Andes, the Pleiades were associated with abundance, because they return to the Southern Hemisphere sky each year at harvest-time. In Quechua they are called collca', or storehouse.
In Ukrainian traditional folklore the Pleiades are known as Стожари (Stozhary), Волосожари (Volosozhary), or Баби-Звізди (Baby-Zvizdy).
'Stozhary' can be etymologically traced to "стожарня" (stozharnya) meaning a 'granary', 'storehouse for hay and crops', or can also be reduced to the root "сто-жар", (sto-zhar) meaning 'hundred-fold glowing'.[16]
'Volosozhary' (the ones who's hair is glowing), or 'Baby-Zvizdy' (female-stars) refer to the female tribal deities. Accordingly to the legend, seven maids lived long time ago. They used to dance the traditional round dances and sing the glorious songs to honor the gods. After their death the gods turned them into water nymphs, and, having taken them to the Heavens, settled them upon the seven stars, where they dance their round dances (symbolic for moving the time) till now. (see article in Ukrainian Wikipedia)
In Ukraine this asterism is considered a female talisman until recent times.
In Japan, the Pleiades are known as 昴 Subaru, and have given their name to the car manufacturer whose logo incorporates six stars to represent the five smaller companies that merged into one. Subaru Telescope, located in Mauna Kea Observatory on Hawaii, is named after the Pleiades also.
In Chinese constellations, they are 昴 mao, the Hairy Head of the white tiger of the West, while the name of the Hindu God Kartikeya means him of the Pleiades.
In the Swahili language of East Africa they are called "kilimia" (Proto-Bantu *ki-dimida in Bantu areas E, F, G, J, L, and S) which comes from the verb -lima meaning "dig" or "cultivate" as their visibility was taken as a sign to prepare digging as the onset of the rain was near.
In the closely related Sesotho language of the Southern Africa's Basotho people the Pleiades is called "Seleme se setshehadi" ("the female planter"). Its disappearance in April (the 10th month) and the appearance of the star Achernar signals the beginning of the cold season. Like many other Southern African cultures, Basotho associate its visibility with agriculture and plenty.
In Western astrology they represent coping with sorrow[17] and were considered a single one of the medieval fixed stars. As such, they are associated with quartz and fennel.
In Indian astrology the Pleiades were known as the asterism (nakshatra) Kṛttikā (which in Sanskrit is translated as "the cutters.")[18] The Pleiades are called the star of fire, and their ruling deity is the Vedic god Agni, the god of the sacred fire. It is one of the most prominent of the nakshatras, and is associated with anger and stubbornness.
The word has acquired a meaning of "multitude", inspiring the name of the French literary movement La Pléiade and an earlier group of Alexandrian poets, the Alexandrian Pleiad.
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
Some good "Pleiades" pages on the web:
 Greek Mythology www.pantheon.org |
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Copyrights:
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ Read more |
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| Occultism & Parapsychology Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. Copyright © 2001 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Pleiades (star cluster)". Read more |
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