Starship Asterisk*

chaitanya kulkarni wrote:yes, I have also noted that faint line. what is that?

TNT wrote:Great job, Jack! And congratulations for your second APOD!

biljofila wrote:Hi I am interested if anyone posted picture of Mercur that is now possible to be seen in the east Europe. Tnx!

jackfusco wrote:I've actually seen it spelled Pleiades more often than Pleiads. For what it's worth, the spell check on Chrome marks Pleiads incorrect.

Chris Peterson wrote:

jackfusco wrote:
I've actually seen it spelled Pleiades more often than Pleiads. For what it's worth, the spell check on Chrome marks Pleiads incorrect.

The question was with respect to the spelling "Pleides", which is simply incorrect.

The asterism is named for the mythical seven sisters, the Pleiades. Singularly, they are called "Pleiads", so that spelling is correct so long as you are referring to the individual sisters, or to individual stars, and not to the asterism itself.

Beyond wrote:Now wait a minute, a single star from the Pleiades is called a Pleiads? That seems to be plural to me. You sure a single star is not called a Pleiad? :?

Beyond wrote:
Now wait a minute, a single star from the Pleiades is called a Pleiads?
That seems to be plural to me. You sure a single star is not called a Pleiad?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades_in_folklore_and_literature wrote:

[b][color=#0000FF][size=150]Lost Pleiad (1884)[/size] by William-Adolphe Bouguereau.[/color][/b]

---

<<The Lakota Tribe of North America had a legend that linked the origin of the Pleiades to Devils Tower. According to the Seris (of northwestern Mexico), these stars are seven women who are giving birth. The constellation is known as Cmaamc, which is apparently an archaic plural of the noun cmaam "woman".

In a Blackfoot legend, the Pleiades are orphans ("Lost Boys")
that were not cared for by the people, so they became stars. Sun Man is angered by the mistreatment of the children and punishes the people with a drought, causing the buffalo to disappear, until the dogs, the only friends of the orphans, intercede on behalf of the people. Because the buffalo are not available while the Lost Boys are in the skies, the cosmical setting of the Pleaides was an assembly signal for Blackfoot hunter to travel to their hunting grounds to conduct the large-scale hunts, culminating in slaughters at buffalo jumps.

The Hopi built their underground kivas for multiple utilitarian uses, the most important of which was a ceremonial meeting place. Access was through a ladder in a small hole in the roof of the kiva, and during certain ceremonies, the night passage of the Pleiades over the center of the opening was a direct signal to begin a certain ceremony. Most of the cultures used the angle of the Pleiades in the night sky as a time telling device.

A Cheyenne myth "The Girl Who Married a Dog", states that the group of seven stars known as the Pleiades originated from seven puppies which a Cheyenne chief's daughter gave birth to after mysteriously being visited by a dog in human form to whom she vowed "Wherever you go, I go".

The Shasta people tell a story of the children of racoon killed by coyote avenging their father's death and then rising into the sky to form the Pleiades. The smallest star in the cluster is said to be coyote's youngest who aided the young racoons.

The Onondaga people's version of the story has lazy children who prefer to dance over their daily chores ingnoring the warnings of the Bright Shining Old Man. The Monache people tell of 6 wives who loved onions more than their husbands and now live happily in "sky country". The early Monte Alto Culture and others in Guatemala such as Ujuxte and Takalik Abaj, made its early observatories, using the Pleiades and Eta Draconis as reference, they were called the seven sisters, and thought to be their original land. In the ancient Andes, the Pleiades were associated with abundance, because they return to the Southern Hemisphere sky each year at harvest-time. In Quechua they are called collca' (storehouse). The ancient Aztecs of Mexico and Central America based their calendar upon the Pleiades. Their year began when priests first remarked the asterism heliacal rising in the east, immediately before the sun's dawn light obliterated the view of the stars. Aztecs called the Pleiades Tianquiztli (meaning "marketplace").>>

Chris Peterson wrote:

Beyond wrote:Now wait a minute, a single star from the Pleiades is called a Pleiads? That seems to be plural to me. You sure a single star is not called a Pleiad?

Singularly they are called Pleiads. One is called a Pleiad. So the spelling "Pleiads" is correct for the case I gave- referring to the stars (plural).