Rigel is also the sixth brightest star in the sky. The second brightest star in Orion, Betelgeuse , Alpha Orionis, has an apparent magnitude of 0.
The constellation Orion contains 10 formally named stars. There are two meteor showers associated with Orion, the Orionids and the Chi Orionids. The Orionid meteor shower reaches its peak around October 21 every year. In Greek mythology, the hunter Orion was the most handsome of men. In one myth, Orion fell in love with the Pleiades , the seven sisters, daughters of Atlas and Pleione. He started pursuing them and Zeus scooped them up and placed them in the sky.
The Pleiades are represented by the famous star cluster of the same name, located in the constellation Taurus. Orion can still be seen chasing the sisters across the sky at night. One night, he had too much to drink and tried to force himself on her.
Hephaestus felt sorry for the blind, wandering Orion and offered one of his assistants to guide the hunter and act as his eyes. Orion eventually encountered an oracle that told him if he went east toward the sunrise, his sight would be restored. Orion did so and his eyes were miraculously healed. The constellation Orion has its origins in Sumerian mythology, specifically in the myth of Gilgamesh.
Sumerians associated it with the story of their hero fighting the bull of heaven, represented by Taurus. Orion is often shown as facing the charge of a bull, yet there are no myths in Greek mythology telling any such tale. However, since Heracles, the most famous of Greek heroes, is represented by the much less conspicuous constellation Hercules , and since one of his tasks was to catch the Cretan bull, there are at least hints of a possible connection between the two.
In one tale, Orion boasted to the goddess Artemis and her mother Leto that he could defeat any beast on earth. The Earth Goddess heard him and sent a scorpion, which stung the giant. In another story, he tried to force himself on Artemis and she was the one who sent the scorpion. In yet another account, Orion was stung while trying to save Leto from the scorpion. However, there is also a myth that does not involve a scorpion: Artemis, the goddess of hunting, fell in love with the hunter and, to stop her from giving up her vows of chastity, her brother Apollo dared her to hit a small target in the distance with her bow and arrow.
Not knowing that the target was Orion, who was enjoying a swim, she hit it on the first try. Devastated by his passing, she placed Orion among the stars. Orion is a well-known constellation in many cultures. Babylonians knew Orion as MUL.
Egyptians associated it with Osiris. Orion was also identified with Unas, the last Pharaoh of the Fifth Dynasty, who was said to have eaten the flesh of his enemies and devoured the gods themselves to become great and bring inheritance of his power. According to myth, Unas travels through the sky to become the star Sabu, or Orion. Because pharaohs were believed to be transformed into Osiris after their passing, some of the greatest pyramids — the ones at Giza — were built to mirror the pattern of the stars in the constellation.
Also captured is the red supergiant Betelgeuse top left and the famous belt of Orion composed of the OB stars Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka. To the bottom right can be found the star Rigel. The photograph appeared as the Astronomy Picture of the Day on October 23, In Hungarian mythology, Orion is identified with Nimrod, a famous hunter and father of Hunor and Magor, the two twins also known as Hun ad Hungarian.
The Chinese knew the constellation as Shen, a great hunter or warrior. Another ancient legend dates back to the second millennium BC. The Hittites a Bronze Age people of Anatolia, the region comprising most of present-day Turkey associated the constellation with Aqhat, a famous mythical hunter. The war goddess Anat fell in love with him, but after he refused to lend her his bow, she tried to steal it. However, the man she sent to get the bow botched the assignment pretty badly, doing away with Aqhat and dropping the bow into the sea.
This is why, according to the myth, the constellation drops below the horizon for two months in the spring. Rigel is the brightest star in the constellation. With an apparent magnitude of 0. Even though it does not have the designation alpha, it is almost always brighter than Betelgeuse , Alpha Orionis.
Rigel is really a star system composed of three stars. It has been a known visual binary since , possibly even earlier, when F. Struve first measured it.
Rigel is surrounded by a shell of expelled gas. Rigel is a blue supergiant. It belongs to the spectral type B8lab and is It has 85, times the luminosity of the Sun and 17 solar masses. It is classified as a slightly irregular variable star, with its luminosity varying from 0. The primary component in the system, Rigel A, is times brighter than Rigel B, which is itself a spectroscopic binary star. Rigel B has a magnitude of 6. It consists of a pair of B9V class main sequence stars that orbit a common centre of gravity every 9.
Rigel, Beta Orionis, is associated with several nearby dust clouds which it illuminates. The most famous one is IC , also known as the Witch Head Nebula , a faint reflection nebula located about 2. Rigel is a member of the Taurus-Orion R1 Association. It was considered by some to be an outlying member of the Orion OB1 Association, a group of several dozen hot giants belonging to the spectral types O and B, located in the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex.
However, the star is too close to us to be a real member of that particular stellar association. Rigel is only about 10 million years old. Eventually, it will grow into a red supergiant, one very similar to Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse is the second brightest star in Orion and the eighth brightest star in the sky.
It is a red supergiant, belonging to the spectral class M2lab. The suffix -ab indicates that Betelgeuse is classified as an intermediate luminous supergiant, one not as bright as others such as Deneb in the constellation Cygnus.
Some recent findings, however, suggest that the star emits more light than , Suns, which would in fact make it more luminous than most stars in its class, so the classification is likely outdated. The star has an apparent magnitude of 0. Betelgeuse is one of the most luminous stars known.
It has an absolute magnitude of Betelgeuse, or Alpha Orionis , is also one of the largest stars known, with an apparent diameter between 0. It is difficult to get an accurate measurement because the star appears to change shape from time to time and, as a result of a huge mass loss, it has a large envelope surrounding it. Alpha Orionis is classified as a semi-regular variable star.
Its apparent magnitude varies from 0. This, however, only happens very rarely. Betelgeuse is believed to be about 10 million years old, which is not much for a red supergiant, but the star is thought to have evolved very rapidly because of its enormous mass.
It will likely end its life as a supernova in the next million years. When it does, it will be easy to find in the sky, not just at night, but also in broad daylight. At its current distance from the solar system, the supernova would shine brighter than the Moon and be the brightest ever recorded supernova in history. The origin of the name Betelgeuse is not entirely certain. Betelgeuse is part of two prominent winter asterisms: the Winter Triangle and the Winter Hexagon.
The stars of the Winter Triangle and the Winter Hexagon. The other two stars forming the Winter Triangle , also known as the Great Southern Triangle, are Sirius and Procyon , the brightest stars in the constellations Canis Major and Canis Minor respectively. Bellatrix , sometimes also known as the Amazon Star, is the third brightest star in Orion and the 27th brightest star in the sky, only slightly dimmer than Castor in Gemini. Bellatrix is a hot, luminous blue-white giant star, classified as an eruptive variable.
Its magnitude varies between 1. The star belongs to the spectral class B2 III. The Hunter was documented in a prehistoric Aurignacian ivory carving. The carving was discovered in a cave in the Ach valley in West Germany in Babylonian star records, which were created around BC in the Late Bronze Age, also showed the Orion origin as a hunter in the sky.
In ancient Egypt, around BC, astronomers identified the constellation as the God Sah or Sahu, who was swallowed by the underworld. The stars in the dense Orion cluster were thought to have been formed in the last 3 million years 4. This is the path that the sun takes as it moves across the sky during the year. Orion lies to the south of the Ecliptic path and is not crossed by the sun. The Orion constellation story does have an interesting link to Scorpio, the 8th sign of the Zodiac and one of the Zodiac constellations.
In the sky, he stands facing the Bull, and it appears as if he is about to do battle with this creature. Some Orion stars are brighter than others and many are identified for their unique attributes. The famous belt of Orion is made up of three 3 stars, Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka.
Mintaka is the western-most star and is a multiple star system about light-years away. Alnitak is the eastern-most star and is made up of a star system of 3 blue supergiants. Alnilam is the middle star of the belt; It is a young star, only 5. When new stars begin to form, they also throw out the gas, which forms into nebulae 8. The Trapezium is a dense open cluster of stars located in the middle of the Orion Nebula.
Galileo Galilei discovered it in Exoplanets are of great interest as they may very well have similar conditions to our Earth and hence the possibility of life. Orbiting this star is a gas giant which they named CVSO 30c. It is so close to its star that the outer layers are being burnt away. They are of interest to astronomers as they orbit close to the mother star, which could possibly make them habitable planets. Through a telescope, it is spectacular! Orion is the 26th constellation in size, occupying an area of square degrees.
Where is Orion in the sky? It is located in the first quadrant of the northern hemisphere. A quadrant is essentially a quarter of a circle, which allows astronomers to measure the altitude of objects above the horizon. The Orion constellation is easy to find in the night sky, both in the northern and southern hemispheres. How to find Orion belt — look for three bright stars in a straight line, they cannot be missed.
Orion northern hemisphere, rises in the east and sets in the west. In December the constellation appears in the night sky at around 8 pm and moves slowly westwards until around 6 am. From January to March it first appears in the south-east at around 6 pm and slowly moves out of view at around 2 am.
In April, look out for Orion at around 9pm in the south-west and watch it dip below the horizon at midnight. Orion appears in December low on the horizon in the eastern night sky at around 10 pm.
It moves slowly westwards until around 6am. From January to March look north-east at around 10pm. It will move slowly down to the horizon by 4am. In April it first appears in the north-west at around 8pm and dips below the horizon around midnight.
However, getting into the countryside away from the city lights gives a glorious view of Orion. The Hunter can be seen with the naked eye and is fairly easy to make out his large body, raised hand, and shield by locating the bright stars.
Using a powerful pair of binos will give you an even better view of the constellation. The best way to view Orion is through a telescope. For beginners , there is a great choice of well-priced scopes that give fabulous views, even if you live in the city. Dobsonian telescopes are versatile and easy to transport if you want to get away from bright lights. The scope easily dismantles into pieces for transporting — great to take with on the weekend away for some star-gazing!.
Orion has a rich history in almost every ancient civilization from Greek to Roman, Chinese, and Aztec. Fascinating prehistoric Aurignacian ivory carvings, dating as far back as years, show images of the Orion Constellation. Archaeologists found the carving in a cave in the Ach valley in West Germany in Here are a few of the planets or potential planets that have been discovered in stars that fall within Orion's boundaries in the Earth's sky.
The star CVSO 30 is 1, light-years away and likely hosts a couple of potential planets. CVSO 30c if it exists is a gas giant that orbits its star at a distance of astronomical units Earth-sun distances and makes an orbit every 27, years. The other candidate planet is gas giant CVSO 30b, which by contrast is extremely close — just 0.
A Jupiter-size potential exoplanet, PTFOb , is about 1, light-years from Earth and if it exists is so close to its star that its outer layers are being ripped away from the rest of the planet. The star's system showed high-energy hydrogen emissions that can't be explained by stellar activities or features, according to astronomers.
There are a few other probable planets in Orion as well, although their existence may be proved or disproved with more observations. These include HD b and HD c two gas giants orbiting in a system with a huge debris disk , HD b a gas giant orbiting in the habitable zone of its star and HD b a gas giant that orbits extremely close to its parent star.
In Greek mythology, Orion was a hunter. According to greekmythology. According to the oldest version, described on greekmythology. Orion inherited the ability to walk on water from his father and made his way to the island of Chios. It was there that Orion drank too much and made sexual advances to Merope, the daughter of the local king. King Oenopion had Orion blinded and thrown off the island. Orion then made his way to the east where Helios — the sun god — restored his eyesight.
Confident in his hunting abilities, Orion declared he would kill every animal in the world but Gaea — the goddess of the Earth — angered by Orion's claims, sent a scorpion to kill him. Upon Orion's demise, Zeus turned him into a constellation, along with the scorpion that killed him.
According to a constellation website constellation-guide. While the name Orion is steeped in Greek mythology, many cultures have been influenced by the story of this constellation. According to constellationguide. Ancient Egyptians believed Orion's Belt was the resting place of the soul of the god Osiris, according to the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
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