Aldebaran is the well-known bright red star in the Hyades. It was called by Ptolemy _Fulgur succularum_. Ali-Sufi says it was marked on the old astrolabes as _al-dabaran_, "the Follower" (because it follows the Hyades in the diurnal motion), and also _ain al-tsaur_, the eye of the bull. It may be considered as a standard star of the 1st magnitude. Modern observations show that it has a parallax of 0"·107. It is receding from the earth, according to Vogel, at the rate of about 30 miles a second; but even with this high velocity it will take thousands of years before its brightness is perceptibly diminished. It has a faint companion of about the 10th magnitude at the distance of 118", which forms a good "light test" for telescopes of 3 or 4 inches aperture. I saw it well with a 4-inch Wray in the Punjab sky. The Hyades were called _Succulæ_ by the Romans, and in the Greek mythology were said to be children of Atlas. The star β Tauri, sometimes called Nath, from the Arabic _al-nátih_, the butting, is a bright star between Capella and γ Orionis (Bellatrix). It is on the tip of the horn in the ancient figure of Taurus, and "therefore" (says Admiral Smyth) "at the greatest distance from the hoof; can this have given rise to the otherwise pointless sarcasm of not knowing B from a bull's foot?"[404] Al-Sufi says that an imaginary line drawn from the star now known as A Tauri to τ Tauri would pass between υ and κ Tauri, which is quite correct, another proof of the accuracy of his observations. He also says that the star ω Tauri is exactly midway between A and ε, which is again correct. He points out that Ptolemy's position of ω is incorrect. This is often the case with Ptolemy's positions, and tends to show that Ptolemy adopted the position given by Hipparchus without attempting to verify their position in the sky. Al-Sufi himself adopts the longitudes and latitudes of the stars as given by Ptolemy in the _Almagest_, but corrects the positions in his _descriptions_, when he found Ptolemy's places erroneous.