Taurus · Star Almanack

{% capture constellation_story %} Aldebaran gives Taurus an eye that seems to glow. The bright, warm-colored star lies along the familiar V-shaped face of the Bull, while the horns extend outward. Nearby, the Pleiades form a smaller gathering that can look like a tiny misty dipper. Greek tradition associated the Bull with Zeus’ abduction of Europa. The young woman was by the shore when the god approached in the form of a handsome, apparently gentle bull. Its behavior encouraged her to draw near. When Europa climbed onto its back, the animal carried her into the sea and away to Crete. The harmless appearance had been a disguise. The scene has often been rendered with great beauty in art, but its action is an abduction: Europa is taken from her companions and homeland by a god who has concealed his identity. In Moschus’ poem, her sea journey becomes an extraordinary procession, full of divine and marine figures. The splendor does not erase her uncertainty. The contrast between a magnificent spectacle and the experience of the person being carried away is part of what makes the story endure. That is one influential identification of the constellation, not the entire history of the celestial Bull. Bulls had a much wider life in ancient religion and star imagery. A single Greek tale cannot explain every earlier use of the figure. The stars themselves offer another distinction between appearance and relationship. Aldebaran seems to belong to the Hyades, the cluster that helps outline the Bull’s face, but it is a foreground star. The apparent arrangement joins objects at different distances. The Hyades are a true stellar group, while the Pleiades form another, younger cluster elsewhere within Taurus. Binoculars show why these are rewarding objects in their own right: broad fields of stars, with more members becoming visible than the unaided eye first suggests. Their different ages make them useful for studying stellar development. Stars born together provide astronomers with a population in which many conditions are shared, allowing differences in mass and evolution to be investigated. Taurus consequently offers a generous beginning for an evening’s exploration. Its eye supplies a landmark, the face leads into one cluster, and the smaller gathering nearby leads into another. The Bull’s story asks us to look past a reassuring appearance. Its astronomy asks for something related but more practical: to distinguish a convincing picture from the physical relationships hidden behind it. ## Sources - [Star Myths | Theoi Greek Mythology](https://ftp.theoi.com/greek-mythology/star-myths.html) - [MOSCHUS, POEMS - Theoi Classical Texts Library](https://www.theoi.com/Text/Moschus.html) - [Spot the Young Stars of the Hyades and Pleiades - NASA Science](https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/skywatching/night-sky-network/spot-the-young-stars-of-the-hyades-and-pleiades/) {% endcapture %}{{ constellation_story | markdownify }}