Taurus
2968 OBJECTSTaurus is a bull marked by the orange eye of Aldebaran and the V of the Hyades, the nearest open cluster to the Sun. The Pleiades ride on its shoulder, close enough and young enough that six or seven of them separate to the naked eye. On the tip of one horn is the Crab Nebula, the expanding wreckage of the supernova Chinese astronomers recorded in 1054.
Taurus holds 2968 catalogued objects: 2349 stars, 466 galaxies, 101 exoplanets, 17 neutron stars, 17 nebulae, 11 star clusters, 6 unclassified, 1 black hole.
STARS · 2349GALAXIES · 466EXOPLANETS · 101NEUTRON STARS · 17NEBULAE · 17STAR CLUSTERS · 11UNCLASSIFIED · 6BLACK HOLES · 1
[
THE FAMOUS ONES
] 5 ENTRIES[
BRIGHTEST OBJECTS
] 12 SHOWNNAME
CLASS
MASS
DISTANCE
MAG
CONSTELLATION
Aldebaran★
K5+III orange star
—
66.64 ly
0.87 V
Taurus
Pleiades★
Open cluster
—
444.0 ly
1.20 V
Taurus
Elnath
B7III blue-white giant
—
133.9 ly
1.65 V
Taurus
Alcyone
B7III blue-white giant
—
403.2 ly
2.85 V
Taurus
Tianguan
B1IVe_shell blue-white subgiant
—
445.0 ly
2.97 V
Taurus
Chamukuy
A7III white giant
—
150.4 ly
3.40 V
Taurus
35 λ Tau
B4IV blue-white subgiant
—
483.9 ly
3.41 V
Taurus
Ain
G9.5IIICN0.5 yellow giant
—
146.7 ly
3.53 V
Taurus
1 ο Tau
G6III yellow giant
—
291.0 ly
3.61 V
Taurus
Prima Hyadum
G9.5IIIabCN0.5 yellow giant
—
161.5 ly
3.65 V
Taurus
Electra
B6IIIe blue-white giant
—
404.7 ly
3.72 V
Taurus
2 ξ Tau
B9Vn blue-white main-sequence star
—
209.1 ly
3.73 V
Taurus
[
COMMON QUESTIONS
] 9 ANSWERED- Is Aldebaran part of the Hyades?
- No, and it is the standard illustration of why a constellation is a line of sight. Aldebaran is about 65 light years away, the Hyades cluster behind it about 150 — the star simply happens to fall in front of the V from here.
- Where in the sky is Taurus?
- Its boundary is centred near right ascension 4h 45m, declination +17.6°. It stands at its highest around midnight in late November, which puts it in the evening sky for the two months after that and behind the Sun half a year later.
- Can I see it from where I live?
- Every part of Taurus clears the horizon from latitudes between 45° S and 80° N. Outside that band some or all of the region never rises at all, whatever the time of year — a constellation is fixed on the sky, and it is your latitude that decides how much of the sky you get.
- What is the brightest thing in it?
- The brightest catalogued object in Taurus is Aldebaran, at apparent magnitude 0.87 (V). That is apparent brightness — how it looks from Earth — so it mixes how much light a thing gives off with how far away it is, and the brightest object in a region is rarely the most interesting one.
- How are the stars in it named?
- The brightest carry Greek letters, assigned by Johann Bayer in 1603 roughly in order of brightness and followed by the Latin genitive of the constellation's name. Fainter stars take a number from John Flamsteed's catalogue, and fainter still a designation from whichever survey recorded them.
- What exactly are the boundaries?
- Lines of constant right ascension and declination, drawn by Eugène Delporte for the IAU in 1930 and referred to the sky as it stood in 1875. Precession has tilted the sky against them since, which is why the boundaries on a modern chart are very slightly askew.
- Are the stars in Taurus actually near each other?
- Almost never. The stars in a constellation lie at wildly different distances and are not related to one another in any way — the pattern is a line of sight from one particular planet. Two stars that look adjacent can be a hundred times further apart than either is from the Sun.
- What is the difference between a constellation and an asterism?
- A constellation is one of the 88 regions the IAU recognises, with a fixed boundary and an official name. An asterism is any memorable pattern that is not one — the Plough inside Ursa Major, the Summer Triangle drawn across three constellations, the Great Square shared between two.
- Why are the names in Latin?
- Because the list was assembled in Latin. Forty-eight of them come down from Ptolemy's catalogue of the second century, and the other forty were coined between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries to fill the southern sky and the gaps. The genitive form is what star names use: Alpha Orionis means the alpha star of Orion.