The Hyades is a group of stars scarcely less famous than The Pleiades, and the stars in the group also form a moving cluster of enormous extent at a distance of 140 light-years from the earth.
Among the ancients, The Hyades were called the rain-stars, and the word Hyades is supposed to come from the Greek word for rain. Among the many superstitions of the past was the belief that the rising or setting of a group of stars with the sun had some special influence over human affairs. Since The Hyades set just after the sun in the showery springtime and just before sunrise in the stormy days of late fall, they were always associated with rain. In Tennyson's _Ulysses_ we read:
"Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vex'd the dim sea."
The Hyades outline the forehead of Taurus, while two bright stars some distance to the northeast of the V form the tips of the horns. Only the head and forequarters of the bull are shown in the star-atlases that give the mythological groups, for, according to one legend, he is swimming through the sea and the rest of his body is submerged. According to another legend, Taurus is charging down upon Orion, The Warrior, represented by the magnificent constellation just to the southeast of Taurus, of which we shall have more to say next month.
Aldebaran is the Arabic word for "The Hindmost," and the star is so called because it follows The Pleiades across the sky. It is one of the most beautiful of all the many brilliant stars visible at this time and we might profit by following the advice of Mrs. Sigourney in _The Stars_:
"Go forth at night And talk with Aldebaran, where he flames In the cold forehead of the wintry sky."
Next to Aldebaran in the V is the interesting double star Theta, which we can see as two distinct stars without a telescope.
Directly south of Taurus is Eridanus, sometimes called Fluvius Eridanus, or The River Eridanus. Starting a little to the southeast of Taurus, close to the brilliant blue-white star Rigel in Orion, it runs to the westward for a considerable distance in a long curving line of rather faint stars, bends sharply southward for a short distance, then curves backward toward the east once more, and, after running for some distance, makes another sharp curve to the southwest and disappears below the southern horizon. Its course is continued far into the southern hemisphere. Its brightest star, Achernar, is a star of the first magnitude, but it lies below the horizon in our latitudes.