Abstract
ON the evening of October 29, while examining the Pleiades with a binocular at about 9 p.m., G.M.T., I noticed that the star Atlas (27 Tauri) was slightly fainter than Pleione (28 Tauri), a little to the north of it. I did not remember at the time what the relative brightness of the stars was, and on looking them up in the Harvard Catalogues I was surprised to find that Atlas was measured 3.80 magnitude, and Pleione 5.19. I find that all the estimates for the last 300 years agree in making Atlas considerably brighter than Pleione. The nights following October 29 were cloudy, but on the evening of November 9 I found Atlas of its usual brilliancy, and more than I magnitude brighter than Pleione. The observed variation was therefore about 1½ magnitude. As Atlas is not a long period variable, it seems probable that it is a variable of the Algol type. The star should be watched, and observations for variable radial velocity would be very desirable.
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GORE, J. A Probable Variable of the Algol Type. Nature 71, 55 (1904). https://doi.org/10.1038/071055b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/071055b0
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