Pleiades in folklore and literature

High school (ages 12+)
Space & Astronomy

Name:

Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/pleiades-in-folklore-and-literature

1. What is the scientific designation?
2. What is the Pleiades star cluster?
3. Why do people say there are seven sisters even though we usually see six stars?

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. What is the scientific designation?Messier 45 (M45)
2. What is the Pleiades star cluster?The Pleiades is a bright group of stars in the night sky that many people call the "seven sisters." It is also known as Messier 45 (M45).
3. Why do people say there are seven sisters even though we usually see six stars?Long ago, people might have seen seven stars because one star, Pleione, looked separate from its neighbor Atlas. Over thousands of years, the Earth's wobble made Pleione appear closer to Atlas, so we now see six main stars.

Axial Precession: The slow, conical wobble of Earth's rotational axis, causing a gradual shift in the apparent position of celestial objects over millennia.
Heliacal Rising: The annual reappearance of a star or constellation on the eastern horizon just before sunrise, after a period of being obscured by the Sun's glare.
Ecliptic Plane: The imaginary plane of Earth's orbit around the Sun, which approximates the common plane of the solar system's planets.