12 November 2012

While observing last night I counted the Pleiades as a way of judging transparency. On a good night I generally count at least five and sometimes six stars but last night I only counted four. And although I know the names of most of the brighter stars I don't know which star goes with which name. So I decided to design a table that I can use to check off which of the stars I can see based on their relative positions. In the process I found that 60% of the bright stars in the cluster are double stars and that, with the exception of Merope, they are all the brightest stars.

		Asterope 5.76
Pleioe 5.05		Sterope 6.44
Atlas 3.63 & 6.63
	Alcyone 2.86 & 6.29	Maia 3.88 & 3.88	Taygeta 4.30 & 8.10
			Celaeno 5.46 & 7.46
	Merope 4.17	Electra 3.71 & 5.71

When ultimately used the chart will be uncolored except for those stars which were seen.