The Bull in the Sky

Exploring Taurus and its environs

Image capture by Dale E. Lehman using Stellarium astronomy software.

In my last stargazing story, we looked at the Winter Hexagon, an asterism of six stars spanning six constellations. Today we’ll take a closer look at two of these constellations, Taurus (the bull) and Auriga (the charioteer).

The Winter Hexagon

Taurus is the more interesting of the two. Situated above Orion’s head, it is marked by the orange star Aldeberan and plays host to two naked-eye star clusters. If you have a telescope or even binoculars and reasonably dark skies, you’ll also find the famous Crab Nebula there, the remnant of a bright supernova — a dying star that literally blew itself apart — observed by Chinese astronomers in A.D. 1054.

The Crab Nebula. ESO [CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Let’s start with Aldeberan. Stars, as you probably know, come in a range of sizes from white dwarfs no larger than the Earth to supergiant stars so huge they might fill the orbit of Saturn. Aldeberan is an orange giant that lies 65 light years away. I’m…