The group of five stars which deck the face of the mythological Bull have the individual names of Phaola, Ambrosia, Eudora, Coronis and Pholyxo. However these names are rarely, if ever, used and the bright red star at the top of the V is generally known as Aldebaran, the name given it by the Arabian astronomers.
During ancient times there was a certain amount of ill-feeling directed toward the Hyades, just as in the case of the "mad stars" in Auriga, for it was thought that since this group of stars rose in November when the stormy weather usually began they exerted an unsettling influence on the atmosphere, which caused rain. The word itself is derived from the Greek word meaning rain.
"Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea."
—Tennyson.
In April when the Hyades set they also "Vext the dim sea" so by watching these stars the ancients were forewarned when the stormy weather and rain was at hand. Hesiod, who gave the ancient world one of its most famous poems, "Works and Days," mentions that when the Hyades are near the horizon they seem to disturb the calm of the waters and when the "Pleiades, Hyades and Orion set, it is time to plow again. But not to go to sea!" Aratus further warned the seamen at this point by reminding them that only a thin plank separates the sailor from Hades.
Kippax remarks that the "watery" or "moist" reputation of the Hyades may be due partly to the legend that the sisters were metamorphosed into stars for immoderately bewailing the fate of their brother Hyas who had been killed by a wild boar. Perhaps the sisters still think of Hyas when near the horizon and their unrestrained tears pour in floods upon the earth. But according to another legend, the Hyades were cloud nymphs and it was their nature to be incessantly weeping.
The beautiful, rose-colored star Aldebaran, "the eye of the Bull," flashes on the end of this V of stars. Like Antares, Betelgeuse and the planet Mars, its rare and colorful light shines like a beacon among the gold and silver of more somber stars.
Aldebaran is a much larger sun than ours and gives 45 times as much light. What a contrast to our sun with its sunflower shade would be this one of a wild-rose pink! But the restful greens of little earth are much to be preferred, with Aldebaran a star in the heavens, 28 light years away.
A little to the west and north of the star, on the tip of the southern horn of Taurus, lies the "Crab Nebula," so-called on account of its resemblance to a crab. This nebula is often mistaken for a comet. The two horns of the Bull reach over into the Milky Way, just below Capella.
The star group of the Hyades rises a little north of east about 12 P. M. in September. By the first of November they are all rising as early as 8 P. M. and by the latter part of January are directly in the south. At such a time, they have been picturesquely likened to a "flock of wild geese flying southward."