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.

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A pair of 10×50 binoculars will enhance the nebula, while a small telescope will bring out dark and light patches. Orion’s Belt forms part of a larger open cluster known as Collinder 70. Orion is a great target for beginners due to the wealth of astronomical objects that lie within its boundary. The stars in Orion’s Belt are Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka. Orion rises in the east and sets in the west, starting at mid-evening (midway between sundown and midnight). It rises four minutes earlier each day, or two hours earlier each month, according to EarthSky.

• There might be some confusion as to whether the Orion’s Belt is pointing to Aldebaran or Mercury.
• Greek travelers staring into the night sky cooked up all sorts of stories about what the stars meant and represented.
• Conveniently, if you follow the line extending through Orion’s belt from your right to your left, you will soon “run into” Sirius.
• The Three Stars asterism originally consisted of Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka, and other bright Orion stars – Rigel, Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, and Saiph – were added later.
• Balthazar, the King of Tarse and Egypt, presented myrrh to baby Jesus.
• This star is much older than the primary star, at around 7.2 million years old.
• Orion’s Belt appears widely in historical literature and in various cultures, under many different names.

Other Names Related to Orion’s Belt

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.
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.

Discovering the Universe Through the Constellation Orion

Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem, “The Princess” describes Orion’s Belt as “those three stars of the airy Giant’s zone.” The Māori people of New Zealand call Orion’s Belt Tautoru, meaning “a string of three.” The asterism represents the stern in the constellation known as Te Waka o Rangi (the canoe of Rangi). Matariki is known as the Māori New Year, which is marked by the rising of the Pleiades between late May and early July.

Deep-Sky Objects

Orion’s belt forms the center of the constellation, bisecting it into upper and lower halves. It even has a “sword” hanging from it, and the stars it includes also serve as a guide to important nearby celestial objects. Coincidentally, the portion of the sky occupied by Orion is home to a variety of interesting non-star objects, too. Rigel is the most prominent star in the constellation Orion.

The stars were collectively known by different names in different cultures. The names include the Weighing Beam in Chinese and Al Nijād (the Belt), Al Nasak (the Line), Al Alkāt (the Golden Grains/Nuts) and Al Mīzān al Ḥaqq (the Accurate Scale Beam) in Arabic. The emission and reflection nebula NGC 2023 appears between the Horsehead and Flame Nebulae. The smaller reflection nebulae IC 431 and IC 435 also appear near Alnitak. The star’s spectrum also varies, possibly because of the dramatic mass loss that it is experiencing. Alnilam is losing mass about 20 million times more rapidly than the Sun.

σ Orionis

• Somewhat overshadowed by its bigger and more famous neighbours, the Orion and Horsehead Nebulae, the Flame Nebula is a cloud of dust and gas illuminated by Belt star Alnitak.
• So, it is just understandable that a story as old as this is related to one of the most recognizable and universally known asterisms like Orion’s Belt.
• Remember Mintaka, the star at the far right side of Orion’s belt?
• Alnitak Ab is a blue dwarf B-type star having an apparent magnitude of 4.3.
• The Greek astronomer Ptolemy included Orion as one of the 48 original constellations in the second century.
• The story of the Magi related to Orion’s Belt has influenced traditional celebrations across cultures and religions.
• The sky currently includes 88 official, named constellations.

They used stars for navigations; medieval versions of Google Maps. Due to its bright, recognizable form, Orion’s Belt is one of the most consistently documented asterisms in the night sky. They are believed to be there to project the pharaoh’s soul toward Orion. While this theory is heavily disputed, the correspondence between the stars and the pyramids is quite remarkable.
The stars were seen as a metaphor for two people who could never unite. Antares, the brightest star in Scorpius, never rises until Orion’s Belt has set. The Aymara people of the Andean highlands in Bolivia, Chile and Peru see the Belt of Orion as a celestial bridge connecting the northern and southern celestial hemispheres. Orion’s Belt is one of the asterisms that can be used to find the declination 0° (the equator), along with the Head of Cetus, the Head of Hydra, the Water Jar of Aquarius, and the Y of Virgo. Mintaka, the westernmost star of Orion’s Belt, appears only a quarter of a degree Orion’s Bet south of the equator and is the nearest bright star to it. Alnilam has between 40 and 44 times the mass of the Sun and a radius of 32.4 solar radii.