The nine brightest stars of the Pleiades are named for the Seven Sisters of Greek mythology: Sterope, Merope, Electra, Maia, Taygeta, Celaeno, and Alcyone, along with their parents Atlas and Pleione. As daughters of Atlas, the Hyades were sisters of the Pleiades. The English name of the cluster itself comes from the Greek mythology, although this celestial entity has several meanings in different cultures and traditions.
The Pleiades have been known since antiquity to many cultures all around the world, including the Maya, the Aztec, the Māori, the Chinese, the Persians, the Japanese, Aboriginal Australians and the Sioux and the Cherokee. In Tamil culture this star cluster is attributed to Lord Murugan and in Sanskrit he is known as Skanda.
The Babylonian star catalogues name the Pleiades MUL.MUL or “star of stars”, and they head the list of stars along the ecliptic, reflecting the fact that they were close to the point of vernal equinox around the 23rd century BC. The earliest known depiction of the Pleiades is most likely a bronze age artifact known as the Nebra sky disk, which is dated to approximately 1600 BC.Some Greek astronomers considered them to be a distinct constellation, and they are mentioned by Hesiod, and in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. They are also mentioned three times in the Bible (Job 9:9 and 38:31, as well as Amos 5:8). The Pleiades (Krittika) are particularly revered in Hindu mythology as the six mothers of the war god Murugan, who developed six faces, one for each of them. Some scholars of Islam suggested that the Pleiades (Ats-tsuraiya) are the Star in Najm, which is mentioned in the Quran.
In Japan, the constellation is mentioned under the name Mutsuraboshi (“six stars”) in the 8th century Kojiki and Manyosyu documents. The constellation is also known in Japan as Subaru (“unite”) and is depicted in the logo and name of the Subaru automobile company.
The rising of the Pleiades is also mentioned in the Ancient Greek text Geoponica. The Greeks oriented the Hecatompedon temple of 1150 BC and the Parthenon of 438 BC to their rising.
Analyzing deep-infrared images obtained by the Spitzer Space Telescope and Gemini North telescope, astronomers discovered that one of cluster’s star – HD 23514, which has a mass and luminosity a bit greater than those of the sun, is surrounded by an extraordinary number of hot dust particles. This could be an evidence for planets formation around HD 23514.
In this video John Hurst from the Nottingham Astronomical Society, Paul Crowther from University of Sheffield and astronomy expert and broadcaster Pete Lawrence take a look at the The Pleiades, one of the most famous collections of stars in our night sky.
The Pleiadian Star Cluster is also supposedly inhabited by an advanced extraterrestrial race called the Pleiadians. They have been communication through various people over the years via trance channeling. The most famous authors to contribute vast amounts of information from the Pleiades are Barbara Marciniak and Barbara Hand Clow.