Fixed star:  ASTEROPE and STEROPE
Constellation:  21 and 22 Taurus
Longitude 1900: 28TAU21	Longitude 2000:  29TAU44
Declination 1900:  +24.15′	Declination 2000:  +24.33′
Right ascension:  03h 45m	Latitude:  +04.34′
Spectral class:  B9	Magnitude:  5.8

The history of the star: Asterope

Fl. 21 Taurus and Fl. 22 Taurus, or kappa (κ Taurus) and , 6.5 and 7. The name Asterope or Sterope is shared by two stars, 21 Taurus and 22 Taurus, in the Pleiades or Seven Sisters, a group of stars on the shoulder of the Bull, Taurus. The two stars are separated by only 0.04°

See Alcyone, the chief star in the Pleiades, for astrological interpretations.

---

from p.407 of Star Names, Richard Hinckley Allen, 1889.

Sterope I and Sterope II, less correctly Asterope, are a widely double star at the upper edge of the rising cluster, and faintly visible only by reason of the combined light; so that the 10th century Persian astronomical writer Al Sufi’s 5th magnitude seems large.

Ovid (43 B.C.-18?A.D.) made use of Steropes sidus to symbolize the whole, but the present magnitudes would show that his star — if, indeed, he referred to any special star at all, as is improbable — was not ours, or else that a change in brilliancy has taken place. In fact, this also, and not without reason, has been called the Lost Pleiad.

“Atlas, that on his brazen shoulders rolls Yon heaven, the ancient mansion of the gods.” — Potter’s translation of Euripides’ Ion. (Euripides’ Ion is online)