Wikipedia
Merope, designated 23 Tauri (abbreviated 23 Tau), is a star in the constellation of Taurus and a member of the Pleiades star cluster. It is approximately 360 light years from the Sun.
Merope is a blue-white B-type subgiant with a mean apparent magnitude of +4.14. Richard Hinckley Allen described the star as lucid white and violet. It has a luminosity of 630 times that of the Sun and a surface temperature of 14,000 kelvins. Merope's mass is roughly 4.5 solar masses and has a radius more than 4 times as great as the Sun's. It is classified as a Beta Cephei type variable star and its brightness varies by 0.01 magnitudes.
Surrounding Merope is the Merope Nebula. Part of the nebula that the Pleiades Cluster is currently passing through, it appears brightest around Merope and is listed in the Index Catalogue as number IC 349.
Merope (; Greek Μερόπη) was originally the name of several, probably unrelated, characters in Greek mythology. The name may refer to:
In Greek mythology, Merope is one of the seven Pleiades, daughters of Atlas and Pleione. Pleione, their mother, is the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys and is the protector of sailors. Their transformation into the star cluster known as the Pleiades is the subject of varied myths.
Merope (; Meropê) was a mortal princess in Greek mythology, who was loved by hunter Orion and was his fiancée.
She is called Haero by Parthenius of Nicaea.
Merope was a Queen of Messenia in Greek mythology, daughter of King Cypselus of Arcadia and wife of Cresphontes, the Heraclid king of Messenia. After the murder of her husband and her two older children by Polyphontes (another Heraclid), Merope was forced to marry the murderer, but she managed to save her youngest son Aepytus, whom she sent secretly to Aetolia. Several years later, when Aepytus grew up, he killed Polyphontes with the collaboration of Merope, and he took revenge for the murder of his relatives and the insult to his mother.
In the 14th-century Balkans, Merope (, , Meropa) was a subregion of Thrace in modern northern Greece and southern Bulgaria. The region lay in the western and middle part of the Rhodope Mountains.
The term is only found in the writings of Byzantine Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos. Merope extended to the Nestos River in the west and to the town of Gratianopolis in the east. Bulgarian historian Plamen Pavlov defines Merope as encompassing the course of the Arda River up north until the Chepelare River and including the fortresses Sveta Irina ("Saint Irene") and Podvis.
In 1343, John VI Kantakouzenos granted Merope to Bulgarian brigand Momchil for his military assistance in the Byzantine civil war of 1341–1347. After Momchil changed sides in the civil war and was ultimately defeated by Kantakouzenos in 1345, Merope returned to Byzantine sovereignty.
In Greek mythology, Merope was Queen of Corinth, and wife of King Polybus.
The royal couple adopted a baby found by shepherds and named him Oedipus. To avoid the prediction of an oracle that he will kill his father and marry his mother, Oedipus goes in voluntary exile to Thebes. On his way he has a quarrel with an old man, and kills him, and for answering a riddle of the Sphinx at the entrance of Thebes gets to marry the queen dowager Jocasta. He fathers four children with Jocasta: Polynices, Eteocles, Antigone, and Ismene. He eventually finds out that the old man whom he killed on his way to Thebes was his own biological father, King Laius, husband of Jocasta, and that he fulfilled the prophecy.
Category:Ancient Corinthians
La Merope is an opera seria in three acts by Geminiano Giacomelli with a libretto by Apostolo Zeno. It was dedicated to Karl August, Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont. It was first performed in 1734 at the Teatro Grimani di San Giovanni Grisostomo in Venice. The stage designer was Alessandro Mauro, the costume designer was Natale Canciani and the choreographer was Francesco Aquilante.