My Stellar Love Affair with the Pleiades

There’s a tiny asterism that never fails to mesmerize. For centuries, the Pleiades cluster has enticed storytellers, even showing up in the cave paintings at Lascaux. That little smudge features in diverse mythologies across the globe. Many cultures around the world have looked to the Pleiades and seen a group of seven young women — or sometimes six with a seventh missing or trailing behind.

I remember the night I first became aware of the Pleiades. I don’t remember the date, nor how old I was. But I can still feel my grandmother’s hand on my shoulder as we stood on her brick driveway one winter night as she pointed upward.

“You can follow Orion’s belt, straight through the bloody eye of Taurus the Bull,” she said, my gaze following the path she traced across the sky. “And right on to the Seven Sisters, who form the saddle on the bull’s back.”

The Seven Sisters, she called them. Mysterious, archetypal, so small and fuzzy in the dark sky. I was instantly captivated.

I already could spot the Big and Little Dippers, so by that point someone had made an attempt to show me the sky. I also have a vague memory of going to a planetarium when I was small, but that was an indoor event — pinpricks of light projected onto a domed ceiling like a magic show.

So that chilly night with my grandmother is the earliest memory I have of being fascinated by the stars. It was the first time I truly saw Orion, Taurus, and the Seven Sisters; it would be a while longer before I heard the name Pleiades. My grandmother’s astronomical tour opened up a world of wonder that had always existed but which I hadn’t registered. A lifetime later, the Pleiades remain emblematic of my celestial awe.

Even with my simmering interest in astronomy, it would be a few decades before I got a good look at the Pleiades — not until I learned I could use binoculars for stargazing in the absence of a telescope. The very first target I picked out was the Seven Sisters.

“It’s like a tiny Big Dipper!” I laughed aloud, alone in the front yard. In the years since, every time I’ve framed the Pleiades in my telescope eyepiece for someone else to view for the first time, they invariably make the same exclamation.

Of course, there are many more stars in this popular asterism than seven. Probably a thousand or more stars make up the Pleiades, but only a handful are bright enough to detect with the unaided eye.

The Pleiades aren’t anywhere close to being the deepest deep sky object you can hunt for as an amateur astronomer. This cluster is quite easy to find once you know what to look for — and I do always hear my grandmother’s voice in my head as I follow Orion’s belt through Aldebaran to find the Pleiades. But easy to spot doesn’t mean ordinary.

While every star is at its best advantage on a clear and cold winter night, the Pleiades are always breathtaking. Through even a low-power telescope, this open star cluster looks like sharp, blue-tinged diamonds nestled into black velvet.

I start looking for this beloved asterism as soon as the air turns cooler in the fall. I yearn to see them again. The first spotting of the season gives me an electric thrill.

“Hello, ladies,” I whisper whenever the Pleiades cluster comes into view. I have been known to sit for hours outside in the cold, my breath freezing on the air as gloved fingers nudge my tabletop Dobsonian telescope along to keep the Sisters in view.

There’s even a connection between my favorite cluster and my favorite holiday: the ancient observances that evolved into Halloween were timed to coincide with the Pleiades’ highest point in the midnight sky, when the veil separating the worlds of the living and the dead was thought to be thinnest.

I have longed to view the Merope Nebula with my own eyes, or to capture it via my clumsy astrophotography. My tablet is named Merope. In the Wordscapes game, I have an entire garden filled with digital butterflies named for the Pleiadean stars. I’ve had a photo of the Pleiades as my laptop wallpaper for just about as long as I can remember.

Maybe some people get bored with the same patterns in the stars as the sky slowly turns — or are anxious for new targets to rise in the East — but I feel a tender pang as spring arrives and the Pleiades slide deeper into the West. Here in February, I’m hoping for our persistent blanket of winter clouds to clear so I can enjoy the Pleiades high in the sky before it’s too late.

Why do I love the Pleiades so much? Maybe the cluster’s rich mythology tugs on the collective unconscious. Maybe it’s my preference for cooler weather and familiar winter skies. Or maybe it’s because every time the Seven Sisters come back around, I’m again standing outside on the brick with my grandmother on the night that she gave me the stars.