Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Taurus (Tau)  ·  Contains:  The star Aldebaran (αTau)
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Alderbaran, Bruce Rohrlach
Alderbaran
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Alderbaran

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Alderbaran, Bruce Rohrlach
Alderbaran
Powered byPixInsight

Alderbaran

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Description

Sometimes the simplest composition of a single star is appealing.
This time it’s Aldebaran - the 14th brightest star in our night sky. Aldebaran "the follower" in Arabic, also known as Alpha Tauri, is the also the brightest star in the constellation Taurus where it defines the bulls eye. Aldebaran "follows" the Pleiades (the 7 sisters, or the 7 daughters of the Titan god Atlas and the ocean nymph Pleione).

At a distance of just 65 light years, it has a luminosity 518 times that of our sun, but is significantly cooler with a surface temperature of around 3700 C compared to the sun at 5800 C.

Taurus is a very old constellation with bovine associations reaching back to Gilgamesh-era Mesopotamia about 4000 years ago. The ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Babylonians, and Romans, all shared the concept of Taurus the Bull, though in some Native American cultures, Taurus was the head of a bison rather than a bull. The Inuit of the Arctic saw Aldebaran as a polar bear. Taurus seems to be charging eastward toward Orion, poised to defend himself.

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Alderbaran, Bruce Rohrlach