Pleiades tagged posts

There are few things more peaceful and relaxing than a night under the stars. Through the holidays, many people head away from the bright city lights to go camping. They revel in the dark skies, spangled with myriad stars.

As a child, I loved such trips, and they helped cement my passion for the night sky, and for all things space.

One of my great joys as an astronomer is sharing the night sky with people. There is something wondrous about helping people stare at the cosmos through a telescope, getting their first glimpses of the universe’s many wonders. But we can also share and enjoy the night sky just with our own eyes—pointing out the constellations and the planets or discovering the joys of watching meteor showers.

It is easy to be bitten by the astronomy bug, and a co...

This is a color composite image of the Pleiades from the Digitized Sky Survey. Credit: NASA/ESA/AURA/Caltech

The poem describes the night sky over Greece more than 2,500 years ago. “This is an example of where the scientific community can make a contribution to knowledge described in important ancient texts, ” said Manfred Cuntz, physics professor . “Estimations had been made for the timing of this poem in the past, but we were able to scientifically confirm the season that corresponds to her specific descriptions of the night sky in the year 570 B.C.” Sappho’s “Midnight Poem” describes a star cluster known as the Pleiades having set at around midnight, when supposedly observed by her from the Greek island of Lesbos.
…The moon has set
And the Pleiades;
It is midnight,
The time is going by,