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The Pleiades (in ancient Greek: Πλειαδες, Pleiades) are seven characters of Greek mythology and their names are Alcione, Celeno, Elettra, Maia, Merope, Asterope and Taigete.
In Roman mythology they correspond to the Vergilie.
Born on Mount Cillene in Arcadia, six of them were visible and one invisible. Some authors write that the invisible one is Sterope and that this happened because of her shame, others that it is instead Electra who was involved in the destruction of the house of Dardanus.
But the discourse of the invisibility can refer to the fact that one of the seven stars of the Pleiades is less visible than the other six and among the various myths there is also the one in which Merope, the only one to have married a mortal, for shame decided to move away from the others.
According to another version of the myth they were kidnapped by an Egyptian and freed by Heracles.
There is also a version in which they were the virgin companions of Artemis and where Orion chased them all over the earth forcing them to hide in the fields of Boeotia until the gods, taken by compassion, transformed them into doves and immortalized their figure in the stars. Once become stars manifested their sympathy to Atreus changing their course.
Finally, according to another version, after the death of their sisters, the Hyades, they killed themselves.
In all versions the destiny of Pleiades is always to become stars.
Maia (also known as 20 Tauri) is a star in the constellation Taurus; it is one of the components of the open Pleiades cluster and lies at a distance of about 440 light-years from us. It is a star of blue color and spectral class B8III, with an apparent magnitude of 3.87. It was indicated by Otto Struve as a variable, signaling from which started the proposal to consider it as a class of variables in its own right, the “Maia variables”, in which there would be included other stars, such as γ Ursae Minoris; however, so far it has not been established a variability for this and other stars. However, after studies performed with the Kepler Space Telescope in 2017, which ascertained that the other 6 main components of the Pleiades are slowly pulsating B variables (SPBs), Maia has been classified by the AAVSO as an Alpha2 Canum Venaticorum variable, with a minimum brightness variation, of 0.004 magnitudes, over a period of just over 10 days.
Its proper name is derived from the mythological figure Maia, one of the mythological Pleiades.
FROM GREEK MYTHOLOGY
According to the Homeric Hymns, Zeus in the silence of the night lay in a cave on Mount Cillene with Maia, who had left the company of her sisters. After she gave birth to the god Hermes, she wrapped him in swaddling clothes and went to sleep. The precocious newborn Hermes escaped from his custody and headed to Thessaly where he stole the herd guarded by Apollo, Maia refused to believe the fact, Hermes, however, invented the lyre with a turtle shell that was demanded by Apollo as ransom for the theft. According to the myth, Maia and her sisters died of sorrow for the misfortunes of their father Atlas and were transformed into the Pleiades star cluster. According to another version, the Pleiades met the hunter Orion, who fell in love with them and chased them for 5 years until they were changed into doves and then into stars, together with the chaser and his dog.
In ancient Greek, the noun μαῖα (maia) means “midwife“: Maia in fact raised Arcade, born from the relationship of Zeus and the nymph Callisto follower of Artemis, transformed into a bear by the goddess or according to another source by the jealous Hera.
FROM ROMAN MYTHOLOGY
In Roman mythology, Maia embodied the concept of ‘growth‘, as her name was juxtaposed with the comparative Latin adjective maius, maior, (bigger, greater). She was originally a namesake of the Greek Maia; with the Hellenization of Latin literature and culture, the two cults were merged.
It is hypothesized that the month of May (in Latin Maius) derives from Maia, although the ancient etymologists reconnect it to the maiores, the ancients again from the adjective maius, maior, with the meaning of major before generation. On the first day of May, the Lares were honored as protectors of the city, and the Flamen of Vulcan sacrificed a pregnant sow to Maia as an offering to an earthly goddess that emphasizes the link between Vulcan and Maia in the archaic prayer. In Roman mythology Mercury, the son of Maia, was celebrated on May 15, the Ides, as the protector of merchants, another possible connection to his mother Maia as the goddess who promoted growth.
Elettra (also known as 17 Tauri) is a star in the constellation Taurus; it is one of the components of the open cluster of the Pleiades, of which it is the third brightest star in relative terms (apparent magnitude 3.72), and lies at a distance of about 440 light-years from the solar system. Its proper name comes from the mythological figure of Electra, one of the mythological Pleiades.
FROM MYTHOLOGY
The Pleiades (in ancient Greek: Πλειαδες, Pleiades) are seven characters of Greek mythology and their names are Alcyone, Celenus, Electra, Maia, Merope, Sterope (or Asterope) and Taigete.
In Roman mythology they correspond to the Vergilias.
Electra, along with two of her sisters, was loved by Zeus, from their union was born Dardanus, the founder of the dynasty of Troy, which abandoned the land where the Pleiades had given birth to go to Troas. The second son he had by Zeus was Iasione, who as an adult was the lover of the goddess Demeter. Finally he also had a daughter, Harmonia that the father of the gods assigned as a bride to the hero Cadmus.
Sometimes it was attributed to her a fourth son that she would have always had by Zeus, Emazione, who, unlike his brothers, remained in Samothrace and here reigned until his death.
The legend of Electra was also connected to the sacred Palladium. Zeus, struck by a violent love for her, wanted to rape her but the girl fled and sought asylum by throwing herself near the precious statue. However it was useless because Zeus succeeded in his intent and made the young girl pregnant. Some blood, sign of the lost virginity, fell on the statue, profaning it. Angry, the goddess Athena, owner of the simulacrum, threw the Palladium and the same Electra on the earth. Or it was Zeus himself, angry for the opposition of Electra, to throw it indignantly on the earth.
According to other legends it was Elettra herself who gave the sacred simulacrum to her son Dardano, who placed it inside the city he founded, as protection for the entire fortress.
At the end of the Trojan War, Electra, who had witnessed from heaven all the deeds of the descendants of her illustrious son, was consumed with grief at the sight of the mythical city of Troy in flames. For the desperation she was turned, together with her sisters, in a star, in the current constellation of Pleiades.
Electra belongs to the spectral class B6III and is therefore a blue giant, that is a star in dilation phase because of the expansion that is beginning to undergo for the gradual depletion of the hydrogen supply in its nucleus.
Its absolute brightness is 1225 times that of the Sun, due to the high surface temperature of the star, quantified in 14,000 K. With a radius 6 times that of our star, it is one of the four giant stars in the cluster.
Electra makes one rotation on its axis with a speed of about 170 km/s, completing one in less than 1.75 days. Like other stars in the Pleiades, it is surrounded by a circumstellar disk of ejected matter, making it a Be star. Its mass is estimated at 5 solar masses, and its age would be 130 million years.
Merope (also known as 23 Tauri) is a star in the constellation Taurus; it is one of the components of the open Pleiades cluster and lies at a distance of about 440 light-years from us. Its proper name is derived from the mythological figure Merope, one of the mythological Pleiades.
FROM MYTHOLOGY
Among the seven sisters was the only one to have married a mortal who, among other things, in his life challenged the gods several times. For this reason among the seven stars that make up the Pleiades, Merope hides and is ashamed, corresponding in the sky to the least bright of the stars called the Seven Sisters of the sky and it is for shame that she had moved away from the others.
It is a subgiant star of spectral class B, corresponding to an intense blue color; its apparent magnitude is 4.14. Richard Hinckley Allen described it as a star of a bright white and violet color.[1] It has a brightness 630 times higher than the Sun and its surface temperature is around 14000 K; its mass is about 4.5 times the solar mass and has a radius over 4 times greater. It is classified as a Beta Cephei variable star, with a range of 0.01 magnitude.
The nebulosity surrounding Merope, NGC 1435 is part of the large dust complex in which the Pleiades are now transiting; another nebula nearby is IC 349.
