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From: William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Meet the new neighbors: The solar system expands.
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2024 16:41:40 -0400
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Michael F. Stemper wrote:
> On 12/09/2024 16.59, William Hyde wrote:
>> Cryptoengineer wrote:
> 
>>> Despite being known as the 'seven sisters', the logo has only six stars.
>>> This matches what is actually naked eye visible now. When the cluster
>>> acquired that name, seven were visible, but proper motion has since
>>> moved two of them too close to resolve.
>>
>> When I first read about this cluster sixty years ago my reference said 
>> that people with "exceptionally good eyesight" could still distinguish 
>> seven stars.
>>
>> Was this true sixty years ago, or could my source possibly have 
>> uncritically quoted some older work written when this was true?
>> Or was it just nonsense?
>>
>> There was no point in testing it myself - I was pleased that I could 
>> see six stars.
>>
>> At the moment, I can't think of much SF that involves this cluster.
> 
> No, but I can think of some SF that mentions a similar situation with
> another cluster. In _Foundation and Earth_ our merry band of wanderers
> visits a stellar system where the inhabitants refer to a cluster,
> naked-eye visible from their planet, by a name implying a certain number
> of stars, but having a different number.
> 
> One of the band (Golan Trevize, maybe) works out the relative motions
> and determines that the number of visible stars could not have changed
> in the time the planet has been inhabited -- not by thousands of years.
> 

I had totally forgotten that.

In Christopher Rowley's future the human civilization that developed in 
the Hyades cluster, though always offstage, is the driving force of 
human expansion, the peak of human culture, the place people dream of 
living.  It gained this status before FTL was developed, so perhaps the 
relatively short transit time between planets was the cause.

It's a better choice than the Pleiades, as it has many g-type stars. 
But the cluster is only 625 million years old so considerable 
terraforming would be required (not a problem in this future).


William Hyde