The Seven Sisters - At-Thuraya

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

 السلام عليكم

Before we get into this post fully, I wanted to say:

Jazzakallaah Kharyan for 5 followers and 124 unique visitors! And to you too, Ummi!!

Now let's start the post officially.

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 Have you ever heard of the word Thuraya? Probably. Have you ever known it's role... in the sky? Probably not. Now, take a look at the picture below.

I don't know if you recognize it, but here's some of it's history.

I also don't know if it has any kufr-related matters, but it's among some Greek constellations, and the Hands of Thuraya's stars have been taken to form the other constellations such as 'Cassiopeia'. 

The Thuraya is known today as the constellation 'Pleiades', a Greek word, as I'm pretty sure you can guess. It literally (in the Arabic language) means Stars and the Planets. Well, that's the closest, but it also can mean Star. According to other sites, it means The Little Abundant One. One of the common meanings to 'Pleiades' is The Seven Sisters as the real Thuraya is a cluster of seven stars, thus naming them 'seven sisters'.

ثريا

And that is the Arabic word. While some people say it as 'thuu-raa-yaa', it can also be pronounced as 'thuu-rayy-aah'. See the difference?

The word dates a long way back, how long, apparently no one knows. ...821 C.E?
...I researched.

Thuraya can also be a girl's name.

So, the big question. Why am I so interested in At-Thuraya, the Pleiades? Well...

Yesterday we went to Katara (click the link for details). So brief account of Katara:

It looks like this, has pigeon towers, and bicycles and scooters can be ridden there.

It happened that there was a Planetarium opened at that time, so we went to see it. We also took some pictures, but that moment later.

It's name is The Thuraya Planetarium, and here is the link! Mashaa Allaah it was nicely designed. It was interesting to look at; especially the 'moon split'. They had a sculpture of the moon broken into half. Alhamdulillaah I got some clear pictures. And this is not edited.

It also had a 'your mass on planets' machine. You had to step on it and it would tell you your mass. On Jupiter mine was eighty something KG! I am VERY light. I stepped on a weight machine a few months ago and I was exactly 35 KG!!

I didn't take a picture though.

The next wonder was these planets hanging from the ceiling but I didn't get a clear picture at all. So I am not putting it here.

The next pretty picture is three little planets, I think planet's moons if you can understand what I am talking about.

It looks so unearthly (I don't mean creepy), which, of course it is, being quite far from our planet the Earth.
 Look what's down below! It's an astronaut! Ramlah was THRILLED to see an astronaut right here. Do you think this is clear?

Those are the three pictures that were really clear alhamdulillaah. Click them to enlarge.

If you want to see them again without scrolling up....

That's it for today, inshaa allaah see you in the next post!

Maimoonah