The Moon creeps toward the two most prominent star clusters late tonight — the Pleiades and the Hyades. Both are in the constellation Taurus. The Pleiades represents the bull’s shoulder, while the Hyades forms his face. The Hyades is to the lower left of the Moon as they climb into good view after midnight. It forms a V, with the point aiming to the right. The brightest star in the V is Aldebaran, the bull’s orange eye. It’s not actually a member of the cluster, though — it just happens to line up in the same direction. The Hyades is the nearest major star cluster — just 150 light-years away. It contains several hundred stars, all of which are several hundred million years old. The stars were born together, from a single giant cloud of gas and dust. They still move through the galaxy together, bound by their mutual gravitational pull. The Pleiades is above or to the upper left of the Moon as they rise. Its brightest stars form a small dipper. The Pleiades is much younger than the Hyade
