Taurus represents Zeus in a bull guise. He chose this form so that he could make Princess Europa daughter of the king of Phoenicia his mistress. By grazing in a field of cows Europa saw the bull and got onto the bulls back. The bull then ran of to the sea where he took Europa to Crete.

Taurus contains the two best known open clusters in the sky, the Pleiades and Hyades. Pleiades is the most popular with almost everyone being able to recognise it instantly. Pleiades is about 400 light years away and contains about 500 stars. It is best viewed with binoculars. In long exposure photographs a wispy blue nebulosity can be seen to cover it.

The Hyades is not so well known as an open cluster as when see with the naked eye the stars are so spread out they due not look visually like a grouping. This is because the Hyades are only about 150 light years away.

There is one Nebula worth searching for on the left hand side called the Crab Nebula M1. A large telescope is needed to bring out a reasonable amount of detail. Small telescopes show the Crab Nebula as a blurred ellipse.