Hyades

The Hyades, also known as Caldwell 41, Collinder 50, or Melotte 25) is the nearest open cluster and one of the best-studied star clusters. Located about 153 light-years (47 parsecs) away from the Sun, it consists of a roughly spherical group of hundreds of stars sharing the same age, place of origin, chemical characteristics, and motion through space. From the perspective of observers on Earth, the Hyades Cluster appears in the constellation Taurus, where its brightest stars form a "V" shape along with the still-brighter Aldebaran. However, Aldebaran is unrelated to the Hyades, as it is located much closer to Earth (65 ly) and merely happens to lie along the same line of sight. The five brightest member stars of the Hyades have consumed the hydrogen fuel at their cores and are now evolving into giant stars. Four of these stars, with Bayer designations Gamma, Delta 1, Epsilon, and Theta Tauri, form an asterism that is traditionally identified as the head of Taurus the Bull.

In Greek mythology, the Hyades (Ὑάδες, Hyádes, popularly "rain-makers" or "rainy ones") are a sisterhood of nymphs that bring rain, for whom the star cluster is named. They are sometimes conflated with the Nysiades (Νυσιάδες).

Quotes

• Looking upward, I saw through a sudden rift in the clouds Aldebaran and the Hyades! In all this there was a hint of night—the lynx, the man with the torch, the owl. Yet I saw—I saw even the stars in absence of the darkness.
  • Ambrose Bierce, "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" in the San Francisco Newsletter (25 December 1886)

• Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
  Where flap the tatters of the King,
  Must die unheard in
    Dim Carcosa.
  • Robert W. Chambers, "Cassilda's Song", st. 3 in The King in Yellow (1895), act 1, sc. 2

• Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
  Vext the dim sea.
  • Alfred Tennyson, "Ulysses", ll. 10–11 in Poems (1842)