11/27/2018 – Ephemeris – The beautiful Pleiades or Seven Sisters

Ephemeris for Tuesday, November 27th. The Sun will rise at 7:55. It’ll be up for 9 hours and 10 minutes, setting at 5:05. The Moon, 2 days before last quarter, will rise at 9:52 this evening.

While I’ve mentioned the Pleiades with regard to its neighboring constellations several times this autumn I haven’t looked at this beautiful star cluster itself. The Pleiades appears as a group of six or seven stars visible to the naked eye, out of over a hundred stars, and is also known as the Seven Sisters. Some also mistake it for the Little Dipper, due to the little bowl shape in the center of the cluster. I call it the “tiny dipper”. The real Little Dipper is now hanging off Polaris in the north. There are a lot of stories about the Pleiades from many different cultures. From the Greek and Roman cultures we get our best known stories of them, that the seven sisters were the daughters of the god Atlas and Pleione. The 9 brightest stars bear the names of the sisters and their parents.

The times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.

Addendum

The named stars of the Pleiades. This is also showing more stars than can be seen with the naked eye. This is the number of stars that can be seen in binoculars, which is the best way to observe them. Most telescopes are too offer too much magnification to fit all the stars in. A thirty power wide angle eyepiece can just fit all the stars in. Created using Stellarium.

How to find the Pleiades in the eastern sky tonight.  Created using Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts).