They’re coming. In another month or so you’ll be able to step outside an hour or so after dinner and look up and there they’ll be … a glittering little swarm of stars memorialized in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem Locksley Hall:
Many a night I saw the Pleiades,
risin’ thro’ the mellow shade
glitter like a swarm of fireflies
tangled in a silver braid.
This star cluster has many hot, young stars that all formed together some one hundred million years ago. They’re passing through a cloud of gas and dust, lighting it up as they go. This is one of the brightest star clusters visible in the northern hemisphere sky, and relatively easy to observe even with the naked eye. Back when I taught at the planetarium, I used to get the same question every fall: “Is that little set of stars the Little Dipper?” I guess they look like a Dipper to the unaided eye — but if you look at them through binoculars or a small telescope, you’ll spot dozens of stars swarming around the 9 brightest ones. Their names, by the way, are quite poetic sounding: Alcyone, Asterope, Atlas, Celaeno, Electra, Maia, Merope, Pleione, and Taygeta. Cultures around the world throughout history have given names to these stars: the Hen and Chicks, the Herd of Camels, the Matari’i, the Little Eyes of the Heavens, and many, many more.
The Pleiades are the first harbinger of the winter constellations (for the northern hemisphere, summer for the folks in the south). Every year when I see them, I know that the glories of Orion won’t be far behind! Right now (in early October) you have to stay up into the wee hours of the morning to see them well after they rise up out of the horizon muck and light pollution.
Here’s a link to help you find the Pleiades and learn a little more about how another culture sees this lovely little band of stars.
Happy hunting!