Visibility
Aldebaran is one of the easiest stars to find in the night sky, partly due to its brightness and partly due to its spatial relation to one of the more noticeable asterisms in the sky. If one follows the three stars of Orion's belt from left to right (in the Northern Hemisphere) or right to left (in the Southern), the first bright star found by continuing that line is Aldebaran.
Aldebaran has the appearance of being the brightest member of the more scattered Hyades open star cluster that makes up the bull's-head-shaped asterism. However, Aldebaran is merely located by chance in the line of sight between the Earth and the Hyades; the star cluster is actually more than twice as far away, at about 150 light years.
Aldebaran is close enough to the ecliptic to be occulted by the Moon. Such occultations occur when the Moon's ascending node is near the autumnal equinox. This event will next occur around 2015. A reasonably accurate estimate for the diameter of Aldebaran was obtained during the September 22, 1978 occultation. Aldebaran is in conjunction with the Sun around June 1 of each year.
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Famous quotes containing the word visibility:
“My children have taught me things. Things I thought I knew. The most profound wisdom they have given me is a respect for human vulnerability. I have known that people are resilient, but I didn’t appreciate how fragile they are. Until children learn to hide their feelings, you read them in their faces, gestures, and postures. The sheer visibility of shyness, pain, and rejection let me recognize and remember them.”
—Shirley Nelson Garner (20th century)