The Caldwell Objects

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The Hyades;
Taurus Moving Cluster
Melotte 25
Type: Open Cluster
Con: Taurus
RA: 04 h 26.9 m
Dec: +15° 52'
Mag: 0.5
Diam: 5.5°
Dist: 151 light-years
Disc: known since antiquity
H E R S C H E L: None.
GC/NGC: None.
N IGHTFALL HAS A MYSTICAL FEEL TO IT IN
late December. The sky shines like black ice, trees
look dark and skeletal, and the stars seem to
shiver in the crisp winter air. Look halfway up
the eastern sky and there is the haunting glow of
the Pleiades, a cluster of hot, young stars
shrouded in mist. Just above the horizon,
mythical Orion throws a leg up over our fence of
mountains (to paraphrase the great American
poet Robert Frost) and slowly vaults into view
with athletic grace. Sandwiched between these
two stirring sights is the Hyades, a bright and
alluring V-shaped arrangement of stars that
skywatchers have pondered since the dawn of
history.
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Next to the Ursa Major moving group (the five
innermost stars of the Big Dipper), the Hyades is
the nearest open star cluster to our Sun, and it is
the nearest moderately rich one. In classical
mythology the V outlines the face of Taurus, the
Bull, one of the sky's most ancient constellations.
The stars of Taurus have been seen as a Bull since
at least 4,000 B.C., when the Sun resided among
them during the spring equinox. That the Sun
united with a bull — a symbol of virility — at
that pivotal time of year did not go unnoticed by
the earliest civilizations, whose agricultural activities
depended on the alternating seasons. The
union heralded the start of spring in the
Deep-Sky Companions: The Caldwell Objects