Pleiades

1. (Myth.) The seven daughters of Atlas and the nymph Pleione, fabled to have been made by Jupiter a constellation in the sky.
2. (Astron.) A group of small stars in the neck of the constellation Taurus; -- called also the seven sisters.

Alcyone, the brightest of these, a star of the third magnitude, was considered by Mädler the central point around which our universe is revolving, but such a notion has been thoroughly discounted by modern observations. Only six pleiads are distinctly visible to the naked eye, whence the ancients supposed that a sister had concealed herself out of shame for having loved a mortal, Sisyphus.