Pleione (star)

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Pleione (or 28 Tauri) is a star in the constellation Taurus and a member of the Pleiades star cluster. It is approximately 440 light years from Earth.

Pleione is a blue-white B-type main sequence dwarf with a mean apparent magnitude of +5.05. It is classified as a Gamma Cassiopeiae type variable star and its brightness varies from magnitude +4.77 to +5.50. Its variable star designation is BU Tauri.

[edit] Purple Pleione

The star is also called Purple Pleione. In the best-selling 1955 nature book published by Time-Life called The World We Live In (which insipired tens of thousands of young members of the baby boom generation to become scientists), there is an artist's impression of Pleione in which it is called Purple Pleione. The star is stated to be a rapidly rotating star and is shown in the illustration as being highly oblated and exhibiting a pale bluish-violet color with a ring of glowing red hydrogen gas around it. The part of the star that is seen through the gas appears a magenta-purple color in the illustration.

The caption under the illustration (the original of which is a painting by the famed space artist Chesley Bonestell) states: "Purple Pleione, a star of the familiar Pleiades cluster, rotates so rapidly that it has flattened into a flying saucer and hurled forth a dark red ring of hydrogen. Where the excited gas crosses Pleione's equator, it obscures her violet light." ^[1]

[edit] References

1. ^ Barnett, Lincoln and the editorial staff of Life The World We Live In New York:1955--Simon and Schuster--Top of Page 284--Illustration by Chesley Bonestell picturing the star Purple Pleione

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