He was the son of the water God Poseidon and King Minos’ daughter. He was killed by a giant scorpion and placed amongst the stars on behest of his lover. You probably don’t get to stare at the night sky very often. With all the late-night shifts, regularly replaced by sleeping on time to attend a morning lecture, it’s been a while. As humans, our love of finding patterns and organization is what led ancient astronomers to include Orion’s Belt in one of the winter sky’s most clear constellations. Other cultural stories and mythologies — ranging from northwestern Mexico to Finland to India — mention the asterism, too.

σ Orionis

• With an apparent magnitude of 2.23, it is the seventh brightest star in Orion and the 73rd brightest star in the sky.
• Other aspects of his appearance may vary, but he is often shown holding a weapon in one hand and a shield or animal hide in the other, based on the positions of the other stars in the constellation.
• The pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacán is exactly half as tall as the Great Pyramid of Giza.
• The nebula is only 1,300 light-years away, making it the closest large star-forming region to Earth.
• The easiest way to find Orion’s Belt is to first find Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky.
• Alnilam, on the other hand, is thought to be a single star — a very large and bright one.

For this reason, Orion’s Belt looks more or less the same as it did millennia ago. The Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33), one of the best-known dark nebulae in the sky, appears just south of Alnitak. The Horsehead is backlit by the emission nebula IC 434 and is part of a large dust cloud catalogued as Lynds 1630 (LND 1630). The celestial equator is the projection of the Earth’s equator into space. The three stars are part of the Orion OB1b subgroup of the Orion OB1 association.

The Star of Bethlehem

Below the three bright stars of Orion’s belt lies his sword, where you can find the famous Orion Nebula. The nebula is only 1,300 light-years away, making it the closest large star-forming region to Earth. Because of its brightness and prominent location just below Orion’s belt, you can even spot the Orion Nebula from Earth! But with a pair of binoculars, you can get a much more detailed view of the stellar nursery.

• Aldebaran has a reddish hue to help you know you’re looking at the right star.
• All three stars are exceptionally fast spinners, with projected rotational velocities of 130 km/s (Mintaka), 150 km/s (Delta Ori Aa2), and 220 km/s (Delta Ori Ab).
• There are about 6,000 in the night sky that are visible to the naked eye but only 58 are selected.
• Hubble observations have shown the Betelgeuse is slowly recovering from this event, and it looks like the star isn’t going to explode imminently.
• Observers from the south of the equator can see Orion’s Belt during summer months.
• Delta Orionis Ab has a mass 22.5 times that of the Sun and a radius of 10.4 solar radii.
• Betelgeuse (pronounced “BEE-tel-joos”) is the name of the most famous star in this famed constellation.

Namespaces

Conveniently, if you follow the line extending through Orion’s belt from your right to your left, you will soon “run into” Sirius. Procyon is also a very bright star and sits in the “little dog” off the Betelgeuse side of Orion’s upper body. Orion is part of the “Winter Hexagon” Orion’s Bet mentioned previously.
With many prominent stars brighter than magnitude 4, Orion is easy to see with the naked eye. Ancient Indians saw the figure as a king who was shot by an arrow, with the stars in Orion’s Belt representing the arrow. Every time you look up at the sky and notice Orion’s belt, you are looking back in time at distant stars that are more than a thousand light-years away. Considering Alnilam’s size and trajectory of expansion, it is estimated to turn into a red giant and explode in the future.

Simple Steps to Start Playing on Orion Stars

The blue giant star Rigel (Beta Orionis) enjoys less notoriety than Betelgeuse, but it is easier to say (“RYE-jel”) and it claims the honor of being the 7th-brightest star in the heavens. The striking constellation is located near the celestial equator, with the right belt star δ Ori even exactly at ¼° (the angle will reach zero around 2080). Therefore, Orion is visible from late autumn to the beginning of spring in both hemispheres. In the star chart convention used since the 18th century, it lies between the river Eridanus and the Unicorn. All three stars are several times larger and brighter than our sun. The faint Monoceros (the Unicorn) appears east of Alnitak.
But note that on a cosmic scale, “close together” means a few light-years away. That’s how far light spreads and when it finally reaches us, it appears as one bright dot. Out of 88 of these constellations, Orion is one of the most famous. It’s a bunch of stars that together, look like a hunter with a club and a shield. Greek travelers staring into the night sky cooked up all sorts of stories about what the stars meant and represented.

Some parts of their surfaces are contracting while others simultaneously expand. The pulsations cause the brightness to vary by about 0.1 magnitudes. Alnilam’s brightness has been observed to vary from magnitude 1.64 to 1.74. O-type stars are the hottest, bluest, and most massive types of stars, as well as the most short-lived. Because of their high mass, they burn through their supply of hydrogen faster than Sun-like stars. Even though it has only a fraction of the Sun’s age, Alnitak is already in the final stages of its life cycle.

Deep-sky objects in the Orion constellation

In late November, Orion appears to be lying on his side, with the three stars of the belt pointing upward, in the Northern Hemisphere. Orion’s Belt is easy to find because it is bright, and the stars in the asterism appear to be equally distant from one another based on our earthly perspective. In fact, the stars and star systems that comprise Orion’s Belt are light-years apart and extremely distant from us.
Even without our telescopes and binoculars, we can still enjoy the spectacle of our night sky. There are many interesting facts about this asterism that goes beyond time and culture, so let us dive deep into it. Dive into the world of stargazing with our comprehensive guide to the constellations! 🌠 Find out everything you need to know about star patterns you see in the night sky. Alnilam is a supergiant at around 2.000 light-years away from Earth, located in the middle of the belt. Alnitak is the second closest star to us from Orion’s belt at a distance of 1.260 light-years.