What is "pleiades"

Pleiades \Ple"ia*des\ (?; 277), n. pl. [L., fr. Gr. (?)]

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.
   --Job xxxviii. 31.

   Note: Alcyone, the brightest of these, a star of the third magnitude, was considered by M["a]dler 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.

late 14c., the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione, transformed by Zeus into seven stars, from Latin Pleiades, from Greek Pleiades, perhaps literally "constellation of the doves" from a shortened form of peleiades, plural of peleias "dove" (from PIE root *pel- "dark-colored, gray"). Or perhaps from plein "to sail," because the season of navigation begins with their heliacal rising.\n

\nOld English had the name from Latin as Pliade. Mentioned by Hesiod (pre-700 B.C.E.), only six now are visible to most people; on a clear night a good eye can see nine (in 1579, well before the invention of the telescope, the German astronomer Michael Moestlin (1550-1631) correctly drew 11 Pleiades stars); telescopes reveal at least 500. Hence French pleiade, used for a meeting or grouping of seven persons.

Pléïades is a composition for six percussionists composed in 1978 by Greek composer Iannis Xenakis, originally commissioned by the percussion ensemble Les Percussions de Strasbourg.

The Pleiades ( or ; , Modern ), companions of Artemis, were the seven daughters of the titan Atlas and the sea-nymph Pleione born on Mount Cyllene. They are the sisters of Calypso, Hyas, the Hyades, and the Hesperides. The Pleiades were nymphs in the train of Artemis, and together with the seven Hyades were called the Atlantides, Dodonides, or Nysiades, nursemaids and teachers to the infant Dionysus.The Pleiades (Πλειάδες), goddesses of the constellation Pleiades and were associated with rain Alcyone (Αλκυόνη) Sterope (Στερόπη) Celaeno (Κελαινώ) Electra (Ηλέκτρα) Maia (Μαία) Merope (Μερώπη) Taygete (Ταϋγέτη)

Pleiades can refer to:

• Pleiades, an open cluster of stars in the constellation Taurus
  • Pleiades in folklore and literature, interpretations and traditional meanings of the star cluster among various human cultures
  • Message From The Pleiades, a book by contactee Billy Meier
• Pleiades (supercomputer), a supercomputer at NASA's Ames Research Center, completed in 2012
• Pleiadeans, an alleged group of extraterrestrials from the Pleiades
• Pleiades (satellite), an Earth-observation satellite programme operated by the French space agency CNES

• Pleiades (magazine) or, Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing, magazine that publishes fiction, poetry, essays, and book reviews
• Bibliothèque de la Pléiade ("Pléiade editions"), the standard editions of major works of (mostly) French literature, published by Éditions Gallimard

• Pleiades (Greek mythology), the seven sisters of Greek mythology
• Pleiades (volcano group), a group of volcanoes in Antarctica
• Pleiades (wine), a wine produced by California winemaker Sean Thackrey
• Con†Stellation I: The Pleiades, the first in an annual series of science fiction conventions in Huntsville, Alabama, USA
• Wish Upon the Pleiades, a Japanese anime series produced by Gainax and sponsored by Subaru
• Pléïades, a composition by Greek composer Iannis Xenakis
• Les Pléiades, a mountain in Switzerland
• Pleiads (also spelled "Pleiades") is an arcade game from 1981 produced by Tehkan (now Tecmo) and Centuri.
• Pleiades' Dust, an EP by the Canadian band Gorguts

The Pléiades constellation is composed of two very-high-resolution optical Earth-imaging satellites. Pléiades 1A and Pléiades 1B provide the coverage of Earth’s surface with a repeat cycle of 26 days. Designed as a dual civil/military system, Pléiades will meet the space imagery requirements of European defence as well as civil and commercial needs.

Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing is an award-winning biannual literary journal that publishes contemporary poetry, fiction, essays, and book reviews. It was founded by undergraduate students at the University of Central Missouri in 1981. The non-profit journal is published by the University of Central Missouri's Department of English and Philosophy. Pleiades publishes work from both established and emerging authors, and dedicates half of each issue to detailed book reviews of recent small-press poetry and fiction. Pleiades is funded by the University of Central Missouri and grants from the Missouri Arts Council. Its headquarters is in Warrensburg, Missouri.

The affiliated Pleiades Press publishes a book of poetry a year, as determined through the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Prize, co-directed by Susan Ludvigson and Wayne Miller. Recent titles have included Julianna Baggott's Compulsions of Silkworms & Bees, and Kathleen Jesme's Motherhouse.

Pleiades ( or ) is a petascale supercomputer housed at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility at NASA Ames Research Center located at Moffett Field near Mountain View, California. It is maintained by NASA and partners Silicon Graphics (SGI) and Intel.

As of November 2015 it is ranked the world's thirteenth fastest computer on the TOP500 list with a LINPACK rating of 4.09 petaflops (4.09 quadrillion floating point operations per second) and a peak performance of 5.35 petaflops following a large hardware upgrade. The ultimate goal of the partnership between NASA and SGI is to attain a peak supercomputing performance of 10 petaflops, or 10 quadrillion floating point operations per second, in order to "increase the computational capabilities for research, [and] modeling and simulation work at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility."