"Many a night I saw the Pleads. Rising through the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid."
Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Locksley Hall."
The Pleiades is the ancient Greek name for a massive, dense stellar pattern ("asterism") of at least 1,000 stars located in the constellation of Taurus the Bull. The group is approximately 440 light-years (or 135 parsecs) away from earth, and only about two degrees wide as they drift through space at a rate of about 25 miles per second. The nine brightest stars of the Pleiades group are named from Greek mythology: Atlas and Pleione, and their daughters Asterope, Alycone, Celaeno, Electra, Maia, Merope, and Taygeta. In the myth, Pleione was a sea nymph who consorted with the Titan Atlas, and gave birth to seven daughters. They are most famous for the Myth of the Seven Sisters.
The Pleaides is one of the nearest open clusters to our sun, and one of the youngest. The "open cluster" designation means that the young stars in the Pleiades were born in the same dust cloud about 100 million years ago, and are bound together by weak gravity; they are slowly expanding out away from one another. From earth and with the naked eye, the Pleiades appear as a tight configuration of a handful of bright stars. These largest stars are B-type stars, hot, massive blue-white stars, higher in temperature and larger than the G-type star or yellow dwarf called our sun. One of the stars, Pleione, is a variable star, flickering about a half-magnitude difference over its 34.5 year cycle.
As seen without telescopes or binoculars from earth, and depending the sharpness of your vision and the clarity of the atmosphere, the Pleiades hosts between six and thirteen bright blue stars arranged in a hook or ladle shape. Modern telescopes and satellites reveal that there are likely well over 1,000 stars tied together in the Pleiades' slowly expanding pattern. On the clearest of nights, the density of the stars in this part of the sky is encased in a blue shimmer, a cloud of gas or dust known as nebulosity.
The Pleiades cluster is one of four asterisms reported in ancient star catalogs around the world: the others are Orion, the Big Dipper, and the Southern Cross.The most ancient star catalog is probably that created by the Babylonians, who called the Pleiades "the Bristle." Those Babylonian tablets listing the Bristle may date to as early as 400 BCE, and they clearly report information long known to the Mesopotamians.
The Greek name of the Pleiades (pronounced Plee-uh Deez, or Ply- or Play-), means "Daughters of Pleione" in Greek, but originally it may have been derived from the Greek na pléfsei "to sail." In the Greek poet's Hesiod's Works and Days, he suggests that sailors should come home and start plowing when the Pleiades disappear from the sky (experience heliacal setting in late October at the time) ahead of the unfavorable winter winds and storms.
"But if desire for uncomfortable sea-faring seize you; when the Pleiades plunge into the misty sea to escape Orion’s rude strength, then truly gales of all kinds rage. Then keep ships no longer on the sparkling sea, but bethink you to till the land as I bid you." Hesiod 700 BCE
This article is part of the Staring into Space project.
Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Contact me at
Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid."
Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Locksley Hall."
Finding the Pleaides. Image credit: Stellarium. Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
The Pleiades is the ancient Greek name for a massive, dense stellar pattern ("asterism") of at least 1,000 stars located in the constellation of Taurus the Bull. The group is approximately 440 light-years (or 135 parsecs) away from earth, and only about two degrees wide as they drift through space at a rate of about 25 miles per second. The nine brightest stars of the Pleiades group are named from Greek mythology: Atlas and Pleione, and their daughters Asterope, Alycone, Celaeno, Electra, Maia, Merope, and Taygeta. In the myth, Pleione was a sea nymph who consorted with the Titan Atlas, and gave birth to seven daughters. They are most famous for the Myth of the Seven Sisters.
The Pleaides in Context. Image credit: Stellarium. Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
The Pleaides is one of the nearest open clusters to our sun, and one of the youngest. The "open cluster" designation means that the young stars in the Pleiades were born in the same dust cloud about 100 million years ago, and are bound together by weak gravity; they are slowly expanding out away from one another. From earth and with the naked eye, the Pleiades appear as a tight configuration of a handful of bright stars. These largest stars are B-type stars, hot, massive blue-white stars, higher in temperature and larger than the G-type star or yellow dwarf called our sun. One of the stars, Pleione, is a variable star, flickering about a half-magnitude difference over its 34.5 year cycle.
As seen without telescopes or binoculars from earth, and depending the sharpness of your vision and the clarity of the atmosphere, the Pleiades hosts between six and thirteen bright blue stars arranged in a hook or ladle shape. Modern telescopes and satellites reveal that there are likely well over 1,000 stars tied together in the Pleiades' slowly expanding pattern. On the clearest of nights, the density of the stars in this part of the sky is encased in a blue shimmer, a cloud of gas or dust known as nebulosity.
The Pleiades cluster is one of four asterisms reported in ancient star catalogs around the world: the others are Orion, the Big Dipper, and the Southern Cross.The most ancient star catalog is probably that created by the Babylonians, who called the Pleiades "the Bristle." Those Babylonian tablets listing the Bristle may date to as early as 400 BCE, and they clearly report information long known to the Mesopotamians.
Naming the Pleiades
The Greek name of the Pleiades (pronounced Plee-uh Deez, or Ply- or Play-), means "Daughters of Pleione" in Greek, but originally it may have been derived from the Greek na pléfsei "to sail." In the Greek poet's Hesiod's Works and Days, he suggests that sailors should come home and start plowing when the Pleiades disappear from the sky (experience heliacal setting in late October at the time) ahead of the unfavorable winter winds and storms.
Project Takeaways
Because the Pleiades follow a heliacal pattern of disappearing from view for parts of the year, they were used by several ancient societies to track seasonality, as the ancient Greek poet Hesiod explains:"But if desire for uncomfortable sea-faring seize you; when the Pleiades plunge into the misty sea to escape Orion’s rude strength, then truly gales of all kinds rage. Then keep ships no longer on the sparkling sea, but bethink you to till the land as I bid you." Hesiod 700 BCE
Sources
- Andrews, Munya. The Seven Sisters of the Pleiades: Stories from around the World. Spinifex Press, 2005.
- Burnham Jr., Robert. Burnam's Celestial Handbook: An Observer's Guide to the Universe Beyond the Solar System. Illustrated, Enlarged and Revised edition ed., Dover Publications, 1978.
- Dire, James. "Galactic Star Clusters." 2024, pp. 191–216, doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-65346-9_11.
- Eschrich, Sarah. "Searching for the Seventh Sister: Cultural Records of Astronomical Phenomena in the Pleiades Cluster." Department of Classics, vol. B.S., The Florida State University, April 4, 2025 2025. general editor, Virginia Lewis, https://purl.lib.fsu.edu/diginole/honors_thesis_submission-5a255def-04a3-4cf4-b876-ff58d7dedc06.
- Hesiod. "Works and Days." William Heinemann; The Macmillan Co., 1914. https://sacred-texts.com/cla/hesiod/works.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/348
- Kemp, Charles et al. "Perceptual Grouping Explains Similarities in Constellations across Cultures." Psychological Science (0956-7976), vol. 33, no. 3, 2022, pp. 354–63, Academic Search Elite, doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/09567976211044157.
- Miller, Roy Andrew. "Pleiades Perceived: Mul.Mul to Subaru." Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 108, no. 1, 1988, pp. 1–25, JSTOR, doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.2307/603243.
- Norris, Ray P. and Barnaby R. M. Norris. "Why Are There Seven Sisters?" Advancing Cultural Astronomy: Studies in Honour of Clive Ruggles, edited by Efrosyni Boutsikas et al., Springer International Publishing, 2021, pp. 223–35. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64606-6_11 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-64606-6_11.
- Ossendrijver, Mathieu. "The Exaltations of Greco-Roman Astrology and Their Relation to Babylonian Normal Star Positions." Journal for the History of Astronomy, vol. 56, no. 4, 2025, pp. 396–411, doi:10.1177/00218286251353245.
- Tennyson, Alfred. Locksley Hall. The Poetry Foundation https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45362/locksley-hall
This article is part of the Staring into Space project.
Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Contact me at