My mythological dictionary says: The seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione; they were the virgin companions of Artemis. Pursued together, with their mother, by Orion, they prayed for rescue to the the gods. Their prayer was answered and they were changed into doves and later into stars, forming a constellation.

Indeed! When last I was on the wee little Greek island of Antiparos (sighhhhh….) the darkness of the night flattened me. Literally! I was outside almost every night, flat on my back on an old stone wall, staring up at the deepest sky I’d seen since visiting Egypt 25 years ago. I swear I could see the North American nebula with the naked eye.

There are many, many benefits to modern conveniences, but more than a few downsides.

Every generation will give something to generation that comes afterwards.

One generation saw the stars clearly without the polluting murk

Another generation understood the stars better.

Perhaps a future generation will know them better yet or even reach them

And see alien vistas and new pristine skies where our Sun is but another white dot in the sky.

To some small extent we make the future every where

& every now.

We shape it in our minds and by words and deeds.

We cannot control our times, we have no say over our birth and the world born into

BUT … We do have a say over how our children are born

And the world they shall see,

We help decide and play a role in how it comes to be.

- Semi-rhyming doggrel by StevoR / Plutonium being from Pluto. Feel free to forward on or use as best suits.

It’s a bit of a mystery why the ancient Greeks identified the Pleiades with the 7 daughters of Atlas. Perhaps one of them faded slightly in the last 3000 years, or maybe they ate more carrots than we do.

Light pollution answers that conundrum methinks.

The ancient greeks had wonderfully dark skies – no electric lighting, no gas lighting, no big gaudy flashing neon signs and lit up sports stadia. They (& other pre-industrial civilisations) were familiar with the stars and planets in a way we can hardly imagine because they could see them so much better.

Of course, while they could see the stars clearly, they didn’t really know what they were or have the science to send spaceprobes out to the “wandering stars” or predict “long-haired stars” (comets), “shooting stars” (meteors) or “new stars” (novae & supernovae.)

I guess we don’t realise how lucky we are – or they were respectively.

Hell, they had to get by with crummy programmable telescopes and podcasts.

Only 6 of the 7 Pleiades are visible to the naked eye. With the slightest optical aid (e.g. Galileo’s telescope) dozens of stars are visible. It’s a bit of a mystery why the ancient Greeks identified the Pleiades with the 7 daughters of Atlas. Perhaps one of them faded slightly in the last 3000 years, or maybe they ate more carrots than we do.

(BTW, “Pleiades” isn’t in Firefox’s spell checker. Maybe that’s why it’s spelled so many different ways in the comments.

I don’t quite YouTube seriously enough for subscriptions, so post more as they’re released please!

True, but for reasons I don’t understand, they only show six stars on the badge:

http://www.thepostwardream.com/pics/car/badge/07.jpg

- Jack

Perhaps…. but: When I was “not yet a teenager”, (well before Sputnik confused the dark skies), I didn’t have access to “all this amazing technology” – oh, ready made telescopes existed; simple ones, mostly refractors and Newtonian reflectors from companies like Edson and Celestron, but they were far too expensive for a kid to afford so … I built my first telescope from a carpet tube and a set of cheap lenses that I bought from Fisher Scientific. I learned about equatorial and alt-azimuth mounts and built both from bits of wood and water pipe. This was the first scope that revealed the craters of the moon and the rings of Saturn to me. Then I wanted more!

So I bought a mirror grinding kit – a 6 inch mirror blank (and a tool blank) and a bunch of various grades of carborundum and jewelers rouge. An old rain barrel and some wax to fix the tool; a carburetor screen and a sodium vapor light ‘borrowed’ from a janitor at my elementary school to test for appropriate mirror specs (I came close to one quarter wave, I think) and about 5 or 6 months later I had a usable mirror blank. I silvered that mirror (good old silver nitrate; snitched from the high school chem. lab within the first week of grade nine – didn’t get caught). Built my own Newtonian reflector and saw many wonders in the skies. I used that reflector for many years and now my grand nephew still uses it (the mirror was aluminised some years ago – silver tarnishes!)

I don’t regret not having “all this amazing technology” because without it I had to really learn about astronomy and its instruments. I think that by the time I was 15 I had learned more real science by myself (astronomy included) than I did in the ensuing ten years of formal education including graduate school. Sometimes not having “all this amazing technology” can be and advantage because you to really learn if you want to explore the skies!

You know that they’re legit amateur astronomers because of the sign off, “Clear Skies”

Hmmm … looks a bit familiar doesn’t he? Sure I’ve him before somewhere .. it’s wait, is it … P something, was it ‘Paul’ somebody or was that an ‘f’ .. Frank? Fineas? Nah, sorry dunno! Must be too obscure for me!

Good video & like the glossary at the end too. Except “winter skies” of course applies only to the northern hemisphere.

Another extra fact or two – The Plieades is known as Subaru to the Japanese – same as the car manufacturer and the Subaru badge displays the “7 sisters” cluster and also, I’m pretty sure that the Plieades actually used to be a constellation in its own right – it was listed amomg Ptolemey’s original 48 constellations!

On the other hand, I think today’s generation is less impressed by the view through a telescope than those of the “space race” generation. Light pollution, not enough public interest in space and getting used to the awesome pictures from Hubble and robotic spaceships is probably at fault.

Two comments though, and the first one is only for this side of the pond: Pl*I*edies?

And the other, lose the 60′s era dynamic mic. It’s a bit distracting, looking like you’ve got a metallic ice cream cone.

- Jack