Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/537

Rh In mythology the group were supposed to be the daugters of Atlas, and half-sisters of the Pleiades. They were changed into stars on account of their grief for the death of their brother Hyas.

According to another story they were the nurses of the infant Bacchus, and the father of the gods rewarded them for their faithful service by placing them among the stars. Originally they were supposed to be seven in number. Hesiod name five, and we now regard the group as containing six stars. The Hyades are among the few stellar objects mentioned by Homer.

Aldebaran, or Alpha Tauri, the lucida of the group, rises an hour later and almost directly under the celebrated star cluster known as the Pleiades, and its name indicates the fact, meaning "the hindmost" or "the follower."

Mrs. Martin, in The Friendly Stars, gives us the following facts concerning this beautiful star: "Aldebaran is the fourteenth star in order of brightness in the entire heavens, and the ninth among those seen in our latitude. It is what is known as a standard first magnitude star. It gives us about one ninety billionth as much light as the sun, but at the same distance as the sun we would get from it forty-five times as much light as the sun gives us. It requires something more than thirty-two years for the light of Aldebaran to reach the earth, which means that it is nearly two hundred trillions of miles away. It is increasing this distance at the rate of about thirty miles a second but even at this rate it will require more than ten thousand years to add another trillion of miles to its distance."

Its red hue indicates that Aldebaran is one of the older stars, one of the suns that like a dying ember still glows persistently as if in anger at the loss of its pristine glory and the thought of its declining power.

According to Prof. Russell the Hyades are receding from us at the rate of twenty-five miles a second, and on the