Taurus
What is Taurus?
Constellations· Winter evenings (N) · V-shaped Hyades + Pleiades. Orion's quarry — the V of the Hyades forms the face, orange Aldebaran the glaring eye, and on its shoulder ride the Pleiades, six or seven stars to the naked eye.
📍 Visible from where you are right now — computed in your browser
bearing · altitude · rise time · best time tonight
Where Taurus is in your sky right now: https://nowsky.org/solar/sky?sel=con:Taurus — location and time set automatically, no login.
Stars of the figure
| Star | Magnitude |
|---|---|
| Aldebaran | 0.9 |
| Elnath | 1.7 |
The 2 brightest of the 7 stars used in the figure (6 lines). Lower magnitude means brighter.
Deep-sky objects near this constellation
Constellation basics
| Season | winter |
|---|---|
| Brightest star | orange Aldebaran (0.9) |
| Highlights | the Pleiades cluster |
Figures are representative approximations. Source: compiled from NASA and IAU public data.
Frequently asked
- When can I see Taurus?
- winter.
- What is the brightest star in Taurus?
- Aldebaran, magnitude 0.9.
- In one line, what is Taurus?
- Constellations — Orion's quarry — the V of the Hyades forms the face, orange Aldebaran the glaring eye, and on its shoulder ride the Pleiades, six or seven stars to the naked eye.
- Where is Taurus in the sky right now?
- Open the sky view for your location and time and it shows the position in the sky right now.
Stars are being born in the darkness of Taurus — T Tauri
Between the stars of Taurus, where the naked eye sees empty sky, spreads the Taurus Molecular Cloud. About 450 light-years away, it is one of the nearest star-forming regions to the solar system, and several hundred stars are being born in it now. The variable star T Tauri near the Hyades is the representative of stars newly born from this cloud, and has given its name to the whole class.
A T Tauri star is what the Sun looked like about a million years after its birth: still contracting, shining without fusion yet started in its core, and varying irregularly as it draws material from a surrounding disk. Taurus has no bright nebula like Orion's and does not look like a nursery, but because it quietly forms Sun-like stars rather than massive ones, it resembles the solar system's own past more closely.
The constellation in depth
Taurus faces Orion across the winter sky: the V-shaped Hyades cluster is the face, orange Aldebaran the glaring eye, two long stars the horns.
On its shoulder ride the Pleiades — the most famous cluster in the sky, six or seven stars to the eye, dozens of blue jewels in binoculars. Near the horn-tip glows the Crab Nebula, wreck of the 1054 supernova.
Aldebaran looks like a Hyades member but is a foreground star at 65 light-years versus the cluster's 153 — a neat proof that the sky's depth is an illusion.
On the tip of the Bull's horn sits the Crab Nebula (M1), debris of the supernova of 1054 that Song-dynasty astronomers logged as a 'guest star' — entry number one of the Messier catalog, making Taurus a starting point of deep-sky history. Follow Orion's belt up and to the right on a winter evening and Aldebaran and the Hyades line up for you.
Related
Figures are representative approximations. Simulated positions use J2000 mean elements.