| Fixed star: ELECTRA | |
| Constellation: 17 Taurus | |
| Longitude 1900: 28TAU01 | Longitude 2000: 29TAU25 |
| Declination 1900: +23.48′ | Declination 2000: +24.06′ |
| Right ascension: 03h 44m | Latitude: +04.11′ |
| Spectral class: B5 | Magnitude: 3.8 |
The history of the star: Electra
Fl. 17 Taurus, Electra, is one of the Pleiades or Seven Sisters, a group of stars on the shoulder of the Bull. This star is clearly visible to the naked eye; yet Electra is the missing Pleiad. There is also another Pleiad, Merope, who is often considered “The Lost Pleiad.”
See Alcyone, the chief star in the Pleiades, for astrological interpretations.
Legend: Zeus fathered her son, Dardanus, founder of Troy. This star is clearly visible to the naked eye; yet Electra is the missing Pleiad who withdrew her light in sorrow at the destruction of Llium, the house of Dardanus. Electra, they say, left her sisters and took a place in the Arctic circle. That is why they sing:
…In Troy’s last hour…
Electra shrouded her form in mist and cloud, and left the Pleiad-band…
Still rises up…their bright troop in the skies; but she alone hides viewless ever since the town of her son Dardanus in ruin fell…
Electra had another son, Iasion (Jason) and a third, Samothrace but more frequently this third child is named as Harmonia.
from p.406 of Star Names, Richard Hinckley Allen, 1889.
“. . . The lost Pleiad seen no more below.” — Byron’s Beppo
Fl. 17 Taurus, or , 4.6. Electra, although for at least two or three centuries the title of a clearly visible star, has been regarded as the Lost Pleiad (another Pleiad Merope is often considered The Lost Pleiad), from the legend that she withdrew her light in sorrow at witnessing the destruction of Ilium, which was founded by her son Dardanos,— as witness Ovid (43 B.C.-18?A.D.) in the Fasti
Electra Trojae spectare ruinas
Non tulit ante oculos, opposuitque manum;
or, as Hyginus wrote, left her place to be present at its fall, thence wandering off as a hair-star, or comet; or, reduced in brilliancy, settled down close to Mizar (in Ursa Major) as Alopex, the Fox, the Arabs’ Al Suha, and our Alcor (in Ursa Major). In the Harleian Manuscript the word is written Electa
Ovid (43 B.C.-18?A.D.) called her Atlantis, personifying the family.
The Pirt-Kopan-noot tribe of Australia have a legend of a Lost Pleiad, making this the queen of the other six, beloved by their heavenly Crow, our Canopus, and who, carried away by him, never returned to her home.
“Thy beauty shrouded by the heavy veil Thy wedlock won.” — Elizabeth Worthington Fiske.