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From: dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd)
Newsgroups: net.astro
Subject: StarDate: March 26: Two Star Clusters Near the Moon
Message-ID: <1162@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 26-Mar-85 02:00:39 EST
Article-I.D.: utastro.1162
Posted: Tue Mar 26 02:00:39 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 29-Mar-85 03:09:58 EST
Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX
Lines: 41


You can use the moon as a guide to some famous celestial objects early
Tuesday evening.  More on what to look for -- when we come back.

March 26:  Two Star Clusters Near the Moon

As the sky darkens on Tuesday -- until the moon sets not long after the
sun -- you can use the moon as a guide to some famous celestial
objects.  The crescent moon Tuesday evening will be located more or
less in between two famous star clusters -- both in the constellation
Taurus -- the hazy little dipper-shaped Pleiades and the V-shaped
cluster Hyades.

These two are related in mythology.  They're considered half-sisters --
together known as the fourteen Atlantides, or sea nymphs.

Both groups of stars are really star clusters -- each consisting of
stars that are gravitationally related in space.  Both clusters are
beautiful -- even more so if you look at them with binoculars.  The
Pleiades cluster appears much smaller than the Hyades in our sky.  To
the naked eye, the Pleiades looks like a misty little dipper.  It's
really much more dipper-like than the real Little Dipper located in the
northern sky.

The Hyades cluster looks like the letter V -- and the brightest star in
the V-shaped cluster is Aldebaran.  Aldebaran got its name because it
appears in the sky so soon after the distinctive Pleiades.  The word
Aldebaran comes from the Arabic for "follower" -- Aldebaran rises
shortly after the Pleiades and follows the cluster across the sky.

So that's Tuesday evening -- two star clusters on either side of the
moon -- one shaped like a tiny dipper and the other like the letter V
-- visible to anyone who looks outside shortly after the sun goes
down.

Script by Deborah Byrd.




(c) Copyright 1984, 1985 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin