Re: VMs: Pleiades

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

At 16:05 12/05/2004 -0400, Larry Roux wrote:
> In any case, there are (by definition) only 7 Pleiades, and 7 alone.  They 
> are named after the 7 daughters of Atlas and Pleione.

Here's a good Pleiades mythology page:-
        http://www.ras.ucalgary.ca/~gibson/pleiades/pleiades_myth.html

>   Any other stars are in the Pleiades group, but not part of the 
> constellation.  The fact that there are 7 is no magical 
> coincidence.  They saw 7 stars and it fit the mythology.  Or the 
> Mythology was created because they saw 7 stars.

Or perhaps (like the Hyades) they just liked the number 7:-
        http://www.ras.ucalgary.ca/~gibson/pleiades/pleiades_see.html
        But my own guess is simply that people like the number seven --
        it's a nice low prime number which, unlike two, three, and five,
        does not generally manifest itself conspicuously in nature. As
        a result it seems "mystical'', and people feel compelled to seek
        it out, say, in the number of visible planets (five) plus the sun and
        moon, or in the artificial construct of a seven-day week. The
        Hyades too were supposed to be seven in number, an abstraction
        which is even less plausible to the eye than that for the Pleiades.
        So much for numerology.

:-)

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.... 


______________________________________________________________________
To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxx with a body saying:
unsubscribe vms-list