Just about every star is born in a cluster – a family of dozens to thousands of stars. Most of these families fall apart, with the individual stars going their own way. The Sun’s cluster, for example, dissipated billions of years ago.

One cluster that’s in the process of dissipating is the Hyades, which outlines the face of Taurus, the bull. It’s the nearest cluster, at a distance of about 150 light-years.

Today, the Hyades contains several hundred stars – probably less than half its original population. The other stars were pulled away by the gravitational tug of the rest of the galaxy.

The cluster’s heaviest stars reside in its tightly packed center. None of them is much more than about twice as massive as the Sun. That’s because of the cluster’s age – 625 million years. All of its heavier stars have already burned out. All that remains is their dead cores.

The least-massive stars have migrated to the outskirts of the cluster. Over the next few hundred million years, those stars will all drift away. That will leave only a sad little remnant of this impressive family of stars.

The Hyades stands to the lower left of the Moon this evening. Its stars form a “V” shape. The brightest star in the outline is bright orange Aldebaran, the bull’s eye. But it’s not a member of the cluster – it simply lines up in the same direction as the stars of the Hyades.

We’ll have more about the Moon and Taurus tomorrow.

Script by Damond Benningfield