The Shape of Taurus in Three Dimensions | Space Telescope Science Institute

The Shape of Taurus in Three Dimensions | Space Telescope Science Institute

This visualization reveals the stars of the Taurus constellation in three dimensions. Watch as the familiar pattern on the sky distorts into a whole new perspective.

The sequence begins by panning up to a view of Taurus in our night sky, accompanied by the constellation Orion to its left. Two of the nearest open clusters can be found in the region with the Hyades cluster at the center of Taurus and the Pleiades (also known as the Seven Sisters) to the right of it. The brightest star in this constellation is Aldebaran, a red giant. 

As the camera starts its journey through interstellar space around Taurus, what used to represent a bull from Earth slowly takes on a completely different shape. Aldebaran, previously appearing to be close to the Hyades cluster, now reveals its actual position is much closer to Earth. The stars change their brightness markedly as they pass nearer or farther from the camera. The onscreen graphic depicts the direction, distance, and speed of the camera motion.

As the view reaches the opposite side of Taurus, the bright star Betelgeuse, a red supergiant in Orion, swoops through. The camera continues its journey and passes behind the Taurus Molecular Cloud, one of the closest star-forming regions at a distance of around 430 light years. At a similar distance, the Pleiades then reappears, providing a close look at the famous star cluster.

This visualization features over 11 million stars down to a magnitude of 13.5 across the sky. The positions, colors, and luminosities are based on the Gaia and Hipparcos star catalogs, complemented by the HYG Database, which includes data from the Yale and Gliese catalogs. Interstellar dust is visualized using the Edenhofer map out to a distance of 1.25 kiloparsecs (~4,000 light years) from the Sun. The rest of the Milky Way plane is recreated using simulated spiral galaxy data for stars and dust from the Horizon GalMer database.

Credits:
Visualization: Christian Nieves, Frank Summers (STScI)
Motion Graphics: Ralf Crawford (STScI)
Data: 
Gaia DR3 – ESA/Gaia/DPAC 
Hipparcos Catalog – ESA
HYG-Database (v4.1) – Astronexus CC BY-SA 4.0 
Edenhofer et al (2023). A Parsec-Scale Galactic 3D Dust Map out to 1.25 kpc from the Sun -- Dataset for the 1.25 kpc 3D Dust Map and the 2 kpc 3D Dust Map (v1.0.2) [Data set]. Zenodo. 
Horizon GalMer Database – Chilingarian I. V., Di Matteo P., Combes F., Melchior A.-L., Semelin B., 2010, A&A, 518, A61

Duration: 2 minutes
Release Date: May 1, 2025

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