This week we get our first good evening views of the best star cluster in the sky along with one of the best meteor showers of the year.
This year, the annual Geminid meteor shower runs December 4th thru’ 17th, peaking the night of the 13th-14th with no Moon in the sky to interfere. The shower will be at its best between sunset and midnight (after midnight for those travelling south of the equator).
You can look in any direction, although meteors will appear to come from the constellation Gemini the Twins, which rises in the north east around 8 p.m. While most meteor showers are comet dust, the Geminids come from particles deposited by asteroid 3200 Phaethon, itself an unusual object. Near the peak, 120 meteors per hour is not uncommon.
While you’re out waiting for those meteors to show up, the Pleiades star cluster in Taurus is beginning to become more prominent as temperatures cool. By 8 p.m., you will find it in the eastern sky about 30 degrees (a little more than a hand span) up from the horizon. Striking to the naked eye and in binoculars, it’s not hard to see why it was named after the Greek word for ‘flock of doves.’
The cluster is dominated by hot blue stars, one fiftieth the age of our own sun.
Nicknamed the Seven Sisters, this cluster is referred to in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, in the Quran and three times in the Bible. The stars are mentioned in ancient texts in Hindu, Hebrew, Egyptian, Roman, Old English, Germanic, Russian and Ukrainian. African, Australian, and Central and South American cultures reference them in writings and carvings. Chinese sources date back to 2357 B.C.
In North America, some Native American tribes believed that all tribes originally came from the Pleiades, and that, as descendants, they have been given the task of keeping the Earth safe; hence the First Nations’ strong ties to nature.
More currently, Pleiades translates to ‘Subaru’ in Japanese, and a stylized version of the cluster is featured on that car company’s emblem.
The Seven Sisters cluster actually has about 500 member stars, packed into an area approximately three Moon-widths across, but just the brightest six or seven can be seen under dark skies by anyone with good eyesight. Too big for a telescope, the best views are with your eyes alone or with binoculars. After your first view of the Seven Sisters, you will be sure to return again and again all winter long.
A great star cluster introduced by a great meteor shower, both available from your own back yard.
