{"id":481154,"date":"2025-12-31T00:05:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T00:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/481154\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T00:05:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T00:05:14","slug":"the-nearly-full-moon-shows-the-way-to-the-pleiades-on-new-years-eve-wral-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/481154\/","title":{"rendered":"The nearly full moon shows the way to the Pleiades on New Years Eve :: WRAL.com"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Whether you&#8217;re watching the pickle drop in Mt. Olive, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wral.com\/lifestyles\/first-night-raleigh-acorn-drop-2025\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the acorn in Raleigh<\/a>, or the ball drop in Times Square, take a moment to look up to the Pleiades on New Years Eve.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Also known as Messier 45 by astronomers, the Pleiades star cluster will be alongside a 90% full waxing gibbous Moon on Dec. 31, 2025, creating a striking pairing visible after dusk globally.<\/p>\n<p>While the Moon is separated by less than a degree, or the width of your pinky on your outstretched hand, it&#8217;s only about a quarter million miles miles away. The Pleiades, also known as the \u201cSeven Sisters,&#8221; is about 440 light-years from Earth\u00a0in the constellation\u00a0Taurus.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>The light we see now from these stars left in 1585, as colonists were finishing their fort on Roanoke Island near what is now Manteo in Dare County.<\/p>\n<p>You don&#8217;t need a telescope to spot the Pleiades, especially with the Moon as a guide this week. But a small telescope or binoculars can reveal details, even fainter stars within the constellation Taurus in the group than the main seven.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/59053e7d-272c-461a-8f22-6e7996a5a559.png\"\/>The stars within the Pleiades are named for the daughters of Pleione and Atlas in Greek mythology<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\tNative American and other indigenous peoples&#8217; star stories<\/p>\n<p>Across cultures, the Pleiades have long captured human imagination. They are the celestial objects that are most commonly mentioned in ancient stories about the stars passed down, often orally, through generations. Some stories tell of origins while others pass on moral lessons.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Kiowa and Lakota legends\u00a0tell of\u00a0seven young girls\u00a0chased by giant bears. To escape, they climbed a rock that rose toward the sky, eventually transforming into stars. The deep grooves on\u00a0Devils Tower\u00a0in Wyoming (a centerpiece to 1977&#8217;s Close Encounters of the Third Kind) are said to be the marks of the bears\u2019 claws as they tried to reach the girls.<\/li>\n<li>The\u00a0Cheyenne\u00a0have a tale where the Pleiades began as\u00a0seven puppies\u00a0that became stars. <\/li>\n<li>The Iroquois tell of a group of seven boys who danced so energetically that they ascended to the sky.<\/li>\n<li>The\u00a0Ojibwe\u00a0name for the Pleiades translates to \u201cHole in the Sky,\u201d seen as a sacred connection between Earth and the night sky.<\/li>\n<li>The\u00a0Navajo\u00a0noted what they call Dily\u00e9h\u00e9 as it was seen low in the dawn sky in the late summer as a guidepost for harvest.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>In\u00a0Australian Aboriginal lore, the Pleiades are the\u00a0Karatgurk \u2014 seven sisters\u00a0who were the keepers of fire and a crow who tricked them into releasing the fire for all humanity to use.<\/li>\n<li>Many Aboriginal groups tell a\u00a0\u201cSeven Sisters Dreaming\u201d\u00a0story involving pursuit, law and survival, deeply embedded in cultural teachings about identity and behavior.<\/li>\n<li>We get the names for each star used today from Greek Mythology from the seven daughters of Titan Atlas and Pleione ( Maia, Elettra, Taygete, Alcyone, Celaeno, Asterope, Merope).  <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Whether you&#8217;re watching the pickle drop in Mt. Olive, the acorn in Raleigh, or the ball drop in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":481155,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[4514,1165,159,783,28000,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-481154","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-astronomy","9":"tag-lifestyle","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space","12":"tag-stargazing","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115811262547187373","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}