The bulk of meteoric debris thus falls upon our planet not as various-sized chunks, but as a fine powder that adds several million tons to Earth each year.
(Not a separate constellation, the Pleiades are just a small part of Taurus, although nobody's ever figured out what bullish body part they're supposed to portray.)
Floating in the eastern sky as darkness falls, they seem benignly intriguing. But that wasn't always the case. In ancient times the Pleiades had a strange, sinister reputation. Such medieval rituals as the pagan Black Sabbath and All Hallows' Eve (which evolved into our own Halloween) were set to occur when the Pleiades culminated--reached their hightest point at midnight. W.T. Olcott's classic Field Guide to the Skies speculates that the rituals could have originated as a sort of commemoration of some ancient catastrophe that resulted in great loss of life. Robert Burnham, in his superb Clelestial Handbook, suggests that all this may be linked to the Atlantis myth, itself perhaps evolved from the awesome eruption of the Santorin volcano in 1450 B.C., which devasted the Minoan civilization on nereby Crete. If indeed that disaster occurred at the same time of year as the Pleiades reached their midnight culmination, the cluster may have become a sort of "memorial for the dead."
The Pleiades had a strange importance to civilizations throughout time and around the world. In Egypt they were revered as one the forms of the goddess Isis. In ancient Persia the date on which they reached their highest midnight ascendancy was marked with ceremony. In the Mayan and Aztec cultures, this same yearly occasion had a forbidding undertone and was given tremendous importance--with at least one city's streets and pyramid aligned with the setting of the Pleiades. {Teotihuacan}
In Japan their ancient name is Subaru. The six companies that merged to produce automobiles in 1953 under this name continue to place a crude star map of the Pleiades on each of their cars. The logo recently changed, with one star now brighter and more separated from the others than before, perhaps revealing some cryptic corporate ascendancy.
A glance upward shows that one Pleiad is brighter than the others; Alcyone (al-SIGH-o-knee), a pastel-blue giant that emits the light of a thousand suns. But all the siblings have easy names to remember if you're a mythology buff: They're Atlas and his seven daughters.
But why seven sisters? That's the real mystery. After all, normal eyesight can readily count only six, the same number found on the Subaru insignia.
If you can see a seventh, then you should be able to see an eighth and ninth as well...