Matariki is a small group of stars that are used by many Maori tribes (but not all) to mark the end and the beginning of the year. Maoris are not the only people to use these stars as a seasonal marker; they have captivated peoples all over the world, being a major signpost in the sky for many of Earth’s older cultures.

Matariki is best known as “the Pleiades” or “the Seven Sisters”, both names coming from legends of the ancient Greek. According to the Greeks, the Pleiades were seven sisters, daughters of Atlas and Pleione. In modern times, Matariki was given the less colourful name “M45” (after the French astronomer Charles Messier who first made a catalogue to include fuzzy objects in the sky). Matariki is also part of the constellation of Taurus (or the Bull). You probably have also heard of Subaru, the Japanese car. This too takes its name from the same star cluster.

Age: 100 million years

Distance: 440 +/- 6 ly

Right Ascension: 3h 3h 47m 24s[1] 24s[1]

Declination: +24° 7′[1]

Type: Open star cluster

Visual Brightness:1.6 (mag)

Apparent Dimension: 110.0 (arc min),

Dimension: 12 ly

Constellation Taurus

Mass: about 800 Sol

Number: about 14 visible with the naked eye, approximatelly 500 in total

Official name: Messier 45 or M45, also known as The Pleiades

For many Maori people, the New Year begins when one sees Matariki (or Puanga) rising in the morning, on the first day after the new Moon. After the new Moon, the Sun would rise before the Moon and the one day moon would be very difficult to detect. The one day old moon would *set* shortly after the sun and may be detectable then.

A day or so before new moon, the very thin crescent moon could be detectable.

It is an absolutely spectacular sight, worth seeing at least once in your life, if not every year. The reason why the Maori New Year falls at a different time every year is because it is a Moon-related event. The Moon plays a very important role in the culture of Maori, who use a lunar calendar (called Maramataka, Marama = The Moon).

Matariki can be seen just before dawn around the winter solstice (June 20 or 21st). Every day it rises four minutes earlier than the previous day. During the springtime, Matariki is visible for much of the night. In Aotearoa, November (Orongonui Tatau Uruora) Matariki is visible most of the night; rising in the northeast soon after sunset and setting in the northwest at dawn. In summer it is in the evening sky, low in the north at dusk, setting in the northwest later. In autumn, it is low in the northwest in the first part of the night. About the end of March it disappears from view, setting in the northwest twilight. From then till mid June Matariki is too close to the Sun to be observed. It reappears in late June rising in the dawn twilight (as mentioned above.) This dawn appearance is called the heliacal rising of Matariki from Helios the Sun in ancient Greek.

Matariki, is an open cluster of young stars located in the constellation of Taurus. They are only approximately four hundred light years away from Earth which means that the light they produce was emitted four hundred years ago. In other words, we see them as they were four hundred years ago in their space. On the cosmic scale, they are our neighbours.

The Seven Sisters of Matariki, oil on canvas by Helen Gerro

The stars which make up Matariki are only 100,000,000 (one hundred million) years old. They are very young in terms of the lives of stars. Our Sun, for example, is five billion (5,000,000,000) years old. Life on Earth began between 3,6 and 3,8 billion years ago. When the Pleiades were born, those who witnessed the event on Earth were the dinosaurs.

Hot? Hmmm, quite so! Classified in the spectral class B, they have a surface temperature of about 10,000-30,000 K. (Our Sun is about 6,000K).

Now why would they be blue? Is it because, as the ancient Greeks believed, Orion was chasing them up in the sky? Have they seen too many things as the Eye of God? We cannot answer these speculations but we know for sure by measuring their temperature that this is the colour that would be emitted by a star which is young, hot and quite big. In fact the cluster is swarming with blue giant stars that stick together, because it is their nature to do so (forming so-called OB associations with giant molecular clouds - also present in star nurseries).

The sisterhood of the Pleiades is made up of around 500 stars that are spread over twelve (12) light years. This means that it would take you 12 years traveling at the speed of light to go from one side of the constellation to the other. The solar system as measured by the diameter of Neptune's orbit is ca 60 AU, that is over 8 light hours wide. If one includes the Kuiper belt its considerably bigger than this.

However, with the naked eye, the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades are actually Six. Or at least this is the number of stars visible now. What happened to the seventh? Apparently, according to Greek legend, the seventh star married a mortal and disappeared about two thousand years ago from the sky, struck by lightning. Her husband was the legendary Sisyphus, the one punished forever by being made to push a rock to the top of the mountain.

There are many and various legends about the Greek Pleiades. These show us how the ancient Greeks had different histories about the sky, much like the legends we find today in the Maori culture that also differ from tribe to tribe (for example, in some tribes, the beginning of the New Year is marked by the heliacal rising of Puanga rather than Matariki.).

A great resource on the astronomical and cultural value of Matariki put together by New Zealand's best astronomers and Matauranga Maori experts.

Matariki: Where do I look to find it? Matariki: What is heliacal rising? Maramataka - the Maori Lunar calendar; Matariki: Seasonal marker; Matariki: Throughout the history; Why chose Matariki (the Pleiades)? Towards Rarohenga: Up or Down?

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