WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Astro Minute: Pleiades and Hyades

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

Discovered in antiquity, these open star clusters are still visible to the unaided eye. Learn more on today's episode of Astro Minute!

Welcome to the Astro Minute, where we're exploring the universe 60 seconds at a time. I'm Lauren Smith, and today we're looking at two bright star clusters. While planets, meteors, and aurora adorn this year's winter skies, more distant objects, such as the Pleiades and Hyades, returned with familiar dazzle to their winter posts. The Pleiades and Hyades are open star clusters, groups of hundreds of stars born together and loosely bound by gravity. They've been admired since antiquity, visible even to the unresolved.

unaided eye. To see them, look east toward the constellation Taurus. The Pleiades is an obvious fuzzy patch sprinkled with a handful of bright stars. Nearby Hyades is V-shaped and accented by bright red aldebaron, though that star is not actually part of the group. You'll see several stars in each cluster and binoculars will reveal many more of their hundreds of members. That's your Astro Minute.