60 Fun Facts About Taurus

Which animal does the zodiac sign Taurus represent?

The Latin word taurus simply means bull, and the sign's glyph is a circle topped with horns.

Taurus occupies which position in the order of the twelve zodiac signs?

It covers 30° to 60° of the ecliptic, the stretch immediately after Aries.

Which planet is said to rule Taurus in Western astrology?

Venus also rules Libra, so the two signs are often paired as the 'Venusian' signs.

Taurus belongs to which of the four classical elements?

The earth signs are traditionally read as practical and grounded, which is where the stubborn-bull stereotype comes from.

Which modality (quality) does Taurus have in astrology?

Fixed signs sit in the middle of each season; Taurus is the fixed sign of spring.

Which sign sits directly opposite Taurus on the zodiac wheel?

Opposite signs are 180° apart, so when the Sun is in one, a full Moon falls in the other.

Which two signs share Taurus's element?

Together the three form the earth 'triplicity', one of four such groups of three.

Which celestial body is said to be 'exalted' in Taurus, at exactly 3°?

Exaltation is a traditional dignity, a sign where a planet is thought to work especially well.

In tropical astrology, the Sun is considered to be in Taurus between roughly which dates?

Because of precession, the Sun is actually in front of the constellation Taurus about a month later than that.

Astronomically, when does the Sun actually pass in front of the constellation Taurus (as of 2008)?

The gap between sign and constellation has opened up over two millennia because of the wobble of Earth's axis.

Under what name was Taurus listed in the Babylonian star catalogue MUL.APIN?

The Hired Man was Aries and the Furrow was Virgo in the same catalogue.

What is the equivalent of Taurus in the Hindu calendar?

Mesha is the ram (Aries), Mithuna the twins (Gemini) and Karka the crab (Cancer).

The Sun's time in Taurus roughly matches which month of the Solar Hijri (Iranian) calendar?

Farvardin, the first month, begins at Nowruz on the spring equinox.

Which red giant is the brightest star in the constellation Taurus?

It marks the bull's bloodshot eye, glaring at the hunter Orion next door.

What does the Arabic-derived name of Alpha Tauri, the bull's eye star, mean?

It 'follows' the Pleiades across the sky each night, rising just after them.

Roughly how far from Earth is Alpha Tauri, the bull's eye star?

That is close enough that it is one of the nearest bright giant stars to the Sun.

The bull's eye star is a red giant with a radius about how many times the Sun's?

Despite being so swollen, its mass is roughly the same as the Sun's; it is simply near the end of its life.

The Pleiades cluster in Taurus is popularly known by what nickname?

Six or seven stars are visible to most naked eyes, though the cluster holds over a thousand.

What is the Messier catalogue number of the Pleiades?

M1 is the Crab Nebula, also in Taurus, so the constellation bookends Messier's list.

The name Pleiades probably derives from the Greek word for what?

Their dawn rising marked the opening of the Mediterranean sailing season.

Roughly how far away is the Pleiades cluster?

That makes it the nearest Messier object to Earth.

How far away is the Hyades, the nearest open star cluster to the Sun?

Its stars are close enough that their distance can be measured directly by parallax.

Together with the bull's bright eye star, the Hyades' brightest members form what letter-like shape?

The V is the bull's face; the eye star merely lies along the same line of sight and is not a cluster member.

Which Hyades star, named Ain ('the Bull's Eye'), hosts the first planet found in any open cluster?

The candidate is a gas giant orbiting a star that has already swelled into a giant itself.

About how old is the Hyades cluster?

Its five brightest members have already burned through their core hydrogen and become giants.

The Crab Nebula (M1) in Taurus is what kind of object?

Its centre hides a neutron star only about 30 km across.

In which year was the supernova that created the Crab Nebula seen from Earth?

Chinese records call it a 'guest star', and it was bright enough to see in daylight.

Who first discovered the Crab Nebula, in 1731?

Messier rediscovered it in 1758 and made it the first entry in his famous catalogue.

Whose 1840s drawing, which looked a bit like a crab, gave the Crab Nebula its name?

He sketched it through his 36-inch telescope in Ireland; the later drawing from his 72-inch 'Leviathan' looks nothing like a crab.

How fast does the Crab Pulsar spin, in rotations per second?

It emits pulses across the spectrum from radio waves to gamma rays.

Beta Tauri, El Nath, takes its name from an Arabic phrase meaning what?

It marks the tip of the bull's northern horn, so the 'butting' is literal.

El Nath sits on Taurus's border with which constellation, where it once had a Bayer designation too?

It was also catalogued as Gamma Aurigae, a rare star with designations in two constellations.

The variable star T Tauri is the prototype of which class of object?

It is still emerging from its birth cloud and lights up the nearby reflection nebula NGC 1555.

Which object in Taurus, found by Herschel in 1790, showed him nebulae were not just unresolved clumps of stars?

He could clearly see a single star at its centre wrapped in a cloud; in 1864 William Huggins proved that cloud was glowing gas.

The Taurid meteor shower is debris shed by which parent body?

Encke's orbit is so short that the Taurids hit the atmosphere more slowly than any other well-known shower.

Because of when they peak, the Taurids are nicknamed what?

They are made of pebble-sized debris rather than dust, so they produce unusually bright bolides.

In Greek myth, Zeus took the form of a white bull to abduct which Phoenician princess?

The continent of Europe may take its name from her.

Zeus swam across the sea with the princess on his back and landed on which island?

Illustrations show only the front of the bull, sometimes explained as Taurus being half-submerged during the swim.

Which of the abducted princess's sons by Zeus became the legendary king who ordered the Labyrinth built?

His brothers Rhadamanthus and Sarpedon completed the trio; Minos and Rhadamanthus later judged the dead.

Which bronze automaton was among Zeus's gifts to his abducted princess?

The other gifts were a hound that never lost its quarry and a javelin that never missed.

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, which goddess sends the heavenly bull against Gilgamesh?

She was furious that the king had rejected her advances.

Who fights alongside Gilgamesh to slay the great bull sent down from heaven?

He then hurls the bull's thigh at the goddess, an insult the gods punish with his death.

Capturing the Cretan Bull was which of the labours of Heracles?

After being shipped to Tiryns it broke loose and became the Marathonian Bull, later caught by Theseus.

What monster did the Cretan Bull father?

Aphrodite cursed Pasiphaë to fall in love with the bull after her husband refused to sacrifice it to Poseidon.

Which gemstone is traditionally assigned to Taurus?

It is also the traditional birthstone for May, which sits mostly inside Taurus season.

A cave painting at which site is proposed as a 17,000-year-old depiction of Taurus and the Pleiades?

The claim, by Michael Rappenglück, concerns the Hall of the Bulls; if right, it would be one of the oldest star maps known.

Which space probe is travelling in the direction of Taurus?

It will not come near any of the constellation's stars for thousands of years, long after its power dies.

Stars in the Hyades were photographed during the 1919 solar eclipse to confirm which theory?

Arthur Eddington's expedition to Príncipe measured how the Sun's gravity bent the starlight.

Which Buddhist festival marks Buddha's birthday on a full moon while the Sun is in Taurus?

Legend says the Buddha was born under the full moon of Vaisakha, the month equated with Taurus.

The early Hebrews, for whom Taurus began the zodiac, matched it with which letter of their alphabet?

Aleph is the first letter, and its ancient pictographic form was an ox's head.

In Inuit tradition the Hyades, called Nanurjuk, represent the spirit of which animal?

The bright eye star is the bear and the surrounding Hyades stars are the dogs holding it at bay.

The ecliptic, the celestial equator and which third great circle all cross Taurus?

The Milky Way clips the constellation's north-east corner, and the galactic anticentre lies near its border with Auriga.

What is the official IAU three-letter abbreviation for Taurus?

The abbreviations were adopted in 1922; the constellation's boundaries were fixed by Eugène Delporte in 1930.

The spring equinox point lay in Taurus during roughly which period?

That is why the bull loomed so large in Sumerian, Egyptian and Minoan religion: it was the constellation of the spring Sun.

What is the proper name of Zeta Tauri, the star at the tip of the bull's southern horn?

The name is Chinese; the Crab Nebula lies just over a degree to its north-west.

A second Greek myth identifies Taurus with which lover of Zeus, whom he turned into a heifer to hide from Hera?

Europa's own family line was said to descend from Io, so the two bull myths are related.

Which Japanese car brand takes its name from the Pleiades and shows the cluster in its logo?

The six-star badge reflects the firm's birth from the merger of five companies; the 8.2-metre Subaru Telescope in Hawaii shares the name.

Who was the first astronomer to observe the Pleiades through a telescope, sketching 36 stars?

He published the drawing in Sidereus Nuncius in March 1610, showing the cluster held many more stars than the eye could see.

The earliest known depiction of the Pleiades appears on which Bronze Age artefact?

Found in Germany and dated to about 1600 BC, the disc shows the cluster as a tight group of dots beside the sun and moon.

Astronomers think the Pleiades' reflection nebulosity is what?

At roughly 100 million years old, the cluster's original dust would long since have been blown away by radiation pressure.