Pleiades

4 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Pleiades \Ple"ia*des\ (?; 277), n. pl. [L., fr. Gr. (?)]
     1. (Myth.) The seven daughters of Atlas and the nymph
        Pleione, fabled to have been made by Jupiter a
        constellation in the sky.
        [1913 Webster]
  


     2. (Astron.) A group of small stars in the neck of the
        constellation Taurus; -- called also {the seven sisters}.
        --Job xxxviii. 31.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     Note: Alcyone, the brightest of these, a star of the third
           magnitude, was considered by M[aum]dler the central
           point around which our universe is revolving, but such
           a notion has been thoroughly discounted by modern
           observations. Only six pleiads are distinctly visible
           to the naked eye, whence the ancients supposed that a
           sister had concealed herself out of shame for having
           loved a mortal, Sisyphus.
           [1913 Webster +PJC]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  Pleiades
       n 1: (Greek mythology) 7 daughters of Atlas and half-sisters of
            the Hyades; placed among the stars to save them from the
            pursuit of Orion
       2: a star cluster in the constellation Taurus

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  56 Moby Thesaurus words for "Pleiades":
     Atlantides, Beehive, Cepheid variable, Hertzsprung-Russell diagram,
     Hyades, Messier catalog, NGC, Napaea, Seven Sisters,
     absolute magnitude, binary star, black hole, double star, dryad,
     dwarf star, fixed star, flower nymph, giant star, glen nymph,
     globular cluster, gravity star, hamadryad, limoniad, magnitude,
     main sequence star, mass-luminosity law, mountain nymph,
     neutron star, nova, nymph, nymphet, nymphlin, open cluster, oread,
     populations, pulsar, quasar, quasi-stellar radio source,
     radio star, red giant star, relative magnitude, sky atlas,
     spectrum-luminosity diagram, star, star catalog, star chart,
     star cloud, star cluster, stellar magnitude, supernova, tree nymph,
     variable star, vila, white dwarf star, willi, wood nymph
  
  

From Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary [easton]:

  Pleiades
     Heb. kimah, "a cluster" (Job 9:9; 38:31; Amos 5:8, A.V., "seven
     stars;" R.V., "Pleiades"), a name given to the cluster of stars
     seen in the shoulder of the constellation Taurus.