Taurus and The Pleiades Photographed with an iPhone 7

Taurus and The Pleiades Photographed with an iPhone 7 – January 2018

I took a few photos of the constellation Taurus and The Pleiades, a few weeks ago.  I should note that the iPhone takes a remarkably good “point and forget” astrophotography, but you generally do have to push it a bit in an image program, like Gimp or Photoshop (or the Apple app provided).  The brightness and contrast filters are the main ones to use, though some of the other enhancements can be useful too.

Taurus and Surrounding Sky

Here’s the result, with a little labelling and photo enhancement in GIMP. I also drew in the imaginary lines, that connect the stars of Taurus and surrounding constellations.

In the picture below, I punched up the stars and other bright elements, using a GIMP filter. 

Taurus is the constellation below Auriga, the vaguely pentagonal grouping of stars at the top of the photo.  It is sort of tucked between Orion (on Taurus’s lower left, though most of Orion isn’t visible in the photo) and Auriga (above Taurus).  Those are both pretty easy to recognize, even in a light polluted city sky.

The easiest marker for Taurus is the red star Aldebaran.  It is usually considered to be the eye of the bull (Taurus is a bull), though the other stars of the bull are not all that obvious in the city.  I assume that the constellation is mostly supposed to be the horns and head of the bull.

If the sky is reasonably clear and your eyes are reasonably good, the open cluster The Pleiades is off to the right of Aldebaran.  The number of stars that you can make out in The Pleiades is often considered an indicator of how good one’s eyesight is.

Close-up View of Taurus and The Pleiades

A closer look at Taurus is given in picture is below.  I used my iPad app, Sky Safari, to identify some of the brighter stars of Taurus and the surrounding areas, as best I could.  The iPhone seemed to pick up a fair number of the brighter stars, though there is always a bit of uncertainty about these things (i.e. is something a camera artifact such as a hot pixel or is it an actual star?).

As you can see, appears to pick up recognizable stars down to magnitude 4.3 or so (some stars in Orion’s shield, for example). 

I also included an enhanced version, with the bright elements emphasized, via the “sparkle” filter in GIMP, as well as an inverted version, where black is swapped for white, and white for black.  

Lastly, here is a zoomed up view of The Pleiades, along with a picture taken by the Hubble Telescope, via wiki.  

These tightly packed stars are all in the 2.9 (Alcyone) to 4.2 (Merope) range.  I don’t know if the elongated nature of some of the iPhone image is related to the reflection nebulae in The Pleiades, or if it is just due to a bit of camera jitter and/or CCD spillover.

I will use Wiki’s article, along with some other references, to give a brief overview of Taurus and The Pleiades:

• The easiest way to find Taurus is to follow the line of stars in Orion’s belt, until you get to a bright red star, which is Aldebaran, the eye of Taurus.

• Then, look around to see the rest of Taurus:

o   the stars that make up the end of the horns, towards Auriga.

o   the V-shaped cluster to the right of Aldebaran, the Hyades.

o   the easily recognized tight grouping The Pleiades, which remind one a bit of a dipper.

• It is best seen in the winter, in the southern sky

• The association of these stars with a bull goes back at least to the Babylonians.  It has many references to Greek mythology, as well.  As usual, they mostly revolve around Zeus’s amorous nature.

• The most notable star is Aldebaran, or Alpha Tauri.  It is a magnitude 0.9 star, the 13^th brightest in the sky, and about 65 light years from Earth.

• Elnath (Beta Tauri) is the number 2 star (1.7 magnitude), one of the horns of the bull.  It is actually shared with the constellation Auriga.  It is a hot blue giant, about 130 light years away.

• The other horn is Zeta Tauri (3.0 magnitude), an eclipsing binary.

• The V part of the constellation contains the Hyades, a great binocular open cluster.  It is the closest cluster to Earth.

• The Pleiades is the other open cluster, which is also spectacular in binoculars or a small telescope.

o   The 500-1000 stars that make it up are young (100 million years), and they are surrounded by reflection nebulae.

o   The main visual stars are often known as the Seven Sisters.  This seems to be true in a lot of mythology.  One reference claims that The Pleiades has much the same mythology the world around, and thus the mythology around it is very old.

o   The grouping does seem to often refer to seven people or animals (sometimes girls, women, sisters or wives, sometimes boys or men, sometimes animals).

o   In the Bible, the Lord asks Job if he can “bind the chains of the Pleiades”, whatever that means.

o   The Pleiades are slowly heading towards Orion’s foot.

• Another very significant object in Taurus is M1, the Crab Nebula.  That’s the remnant of the 1054 supernova, which was visible from Earth.  In the center of the nebula is a young pulsar (rapidly spinning neutron star).

• The original specimen of T Tauri stars, is of course, T Tauri.  This is a class of stars that are newly born, that vary greatly in magnitude over fairly short time frames.

• Some stars in Taurus were used to confirm Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, during the 1919 solar eclipse.  Basically, the light from the stars was deflected by the gravity of the sun, which could be seen and measured during the eclipse, since the stars appeared to be offset a bit by the bending of the light.

• A Star Trek episode was set on Taurus II, the Galileo Seven.  It has lots of good banter between Spock and McCoy.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades_in_folklore_and_literature

Sky Safari computer program

Wiki

Memory Alpha

The Cambridge Guide to Stars and Planets

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Now that you have read some real science (astronomy and astrophysics), you should read some science fiction.  Since the blog mentioned Star Trek, here’s one with some Star Trek references (implied).

“The Zoo Hypothesis”, an Alien Invasion Story

Here’s a story giving a possible scenario for the so-called Zoo Hypothesis, known in Star Trek lore as the Prime Directive.  It’s an explanation sometimes given to account for a mystery in the Search for Intelligent Life, known as The Great Silence, or Fermi’s Paradox.
Basically, Enrico Fermi argued (quite convincingly, to many observers), that there had been ample time for an alien intelligence to colonize the galaxy since its formation, so where are they?  The Zoo Hypotheses says that they are out there, but have cordoned off the Earth from contact, until we are sufficiently evolved or culturally advanced to handle the impact of alien contact.

This story takes a humorous tongue in cheek approach to that explanation.  It also features dogs and sly references to Star Trek.  Talk about man’s Best Friend.

Amazon U.S.: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076RR1PGD

Amazon U.K.: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B076RR1PGD

Amazon Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B076RR1PGD