9:00 pm EST on January 15, 2009. Looking at Zenith, South at Bottom. (click to enlarge)*
Bullfighting, with its cruel and barbaric treatment of animals, has fallen out of favor in modern circles, but in ancient times it was considered an activity honorable enough to be immortalized in the sky. Orion the Hunter is classically depicted as holding a club and a shield deployed against the charging bull, Taurus. The stars Beta and Zeta Tauri represent the tips of the bull's horns, while first-magnitude Aldebaran marks the animal's bloodshot eye. Taurus is a rich region to explore with binoculars or a low-power telescope; for one thing, it hosts two of the finest open star clusters in the sky. The Hyades are spread out in a V-shaped swarm 6° across encompassing Aldebaran. In truth though, Aldebaran, 65 light-years away, is a foreground star and not a true member of the cluster; the Hyades lie beyond it, about 150 light-years away from us. The other open cluster in Taurus, the Pleiades, is even more compact, and lies 400 light-years away. Some claim to see seven stars in the Pleiades with the naked eye, hence the cluster's nickname, "The Seven Sisters." Telescopes have discerned about 100 member stars in the cluster.