Alcyone

[StokieMarc]

Alcyone.........Wow!! I looked up at the sky, looking for Ursa Major which had disappeared behind some trees, but I found Alcyone. With Naked eye it is oustanding, and through telescope it is magical. I am so happy that the sky is starting to show it's gems, and I am so looking forward to the Winter sky and getting a glimpse of Betelgeuse again£ But for now, Alcyone is the star of the sky for me

[Peter Drew]

Are we talking about the correct star?, I thought Alcyone was one of the brighter stars of the Pleiades group, in itself not as eyecatching as 1st magnitude stars.

[StokieMarc]

It appears you are correct Peter. I was a little bit on the tipsy side last night and tried to use Google Sky to find out what it was, and it seems it just pointed out the name of one of the stars. They were certainly a great sight though, and one I've not seen before. Thanks for clearing it up for me Peter.

[mickeymac]

Alcyone Ephemeris 4.2 is an accurate and fast astronomical ephemeris calculator covering the period 3000 BC to AD 3000. It calculates heliocentric, geocentric, and topocentric positions of the Sun (Earth), planets, 18 natural satellites, and small bodies (minor planets and comets) in ecliptical, equatorial, and horizontal coordinates, with optional corrections for parallax and refraction; rectangular coordinates, velocity, apparent diameter, magnitude, phase, lunar libration, orbital elements, differences for all of these, and more.

[anmolmark]

Alcyone (η Tau, η Tauri, Eta Tauri) is a star system in the constellation Taurus. It is the brightest star in the Pleiades open cluster, which is a young cluster, aged at less than 50 million years. Alcyone is approximately 370 light years from Earth. It is named after the mythological figure Alcyone, one of the mythological Pleiades. It is known as 昴宿六 (the Sixth Star of the Hairy Head) in Chinese.

[prankpeter]

Alcyone is a star system in the constellation Taurus. It is the brightest star in the Pleiades open cluster, which is a young cluster, aged at less than 50 million years. Alcyone is approximately 370 light years from Earth. It is named after the mythological figure Alcyone, one of the mythological Pleiades. It is known as (the Sixth Star of the Hairy Head) in Chinese.Alcyone is an eclipsing binary, and the two components have a separation of 0.031 arcseconds, or about the distance from the Sun to Jupiter.