2. Orion the hunter
An absolute belter of a constellation
It’s beginning to look a lot like Orion
Everywhere you go
Take a look in the winter sky, he’s certain to catch your eye
With Betelgeuse and Rigel all aglow
It’s beginning to look a lot like Orion
Shining clear and true
But the prettiest sight to see, underneath the belt of three
Is M42…
(Lyrics by me, based on ‘It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas’)
If last night’s prompt was excluded from those who live in brightly lit areas, fear not. We now turn our gaze to something that can be seen pretty much anywhere, no matter your geographical location, or your level of light pollution.
Go out at about 8 or 9pm, and look up at the sky, particularly to the southeast. One constellation will grab your attention immediately. It is at this time when Orion the hunter appears, striding forth with poise and confidence across the frost-swept winter night. At midnight he stands high in the southern sky in a glittering power pose, lording over the heavens, before moving westwards to recline and set, because even the mightiest of hunters needs to rest after a long night chasing prey.
This is without a doubt the most prominent and magnificent constellation in the sky, bold and vivid enough to be seen even in a city! The brightest stars make a shape likened to an hourglass, a bow tie or even an Italian-style coffee pot, but it’s also not too hard to see the human figure here, with stars representing his shoulders and legs and of course, that item of clothing that defines Orion like no other: the three-star belt. Fainter stars complete the picture and mark out his head, a bow or shield in one hand, the other arm raised up holding a club, and a sword hanging from the belt.
Orion is one of the few constellations that can be seen worldwide, in both hemispheres, best seen from December to March. In the southern hemisphere, he is ‘upside down’, seemingly cartwheeling across the summer night sky.
According to the Greeks, Orion, son of the sea god Poseidon, was a handsome giant with the ability to walk on water. There was one thing he loved more than anything else, and that was hunting, and he quickly became the greatest hunter known. However, Orion’s fame went straight to his head, and he proclaimed that he could hunt down all the wild animals on earth! This boast angered Gaia, the earth goddess, and she created a formidable foe to kill the hunter-a giant, monstrous scorpion, and placed it in his path. Orion tried his best to kill the beast and failed, and the arachnid stung the hunter, the venom acting swiftly. Some accounts say that Asclepius, god of healing, saved his life. Others say he died of the sting.
In another myth, where Orion survived the scorpion encounter, Artemis partnered with him, which irked her brother, the sun god Apollo, who thought her hunting companion was a threat to her chastity. And so he tricked Artemis into shooting Orion in the head with an arrow. Heartbroken by what she had done, she placed Orion in the heavens and transformed him into stars, making him more beautiful in the sky than he was on earth…
However, Artemis acknowledged the wish of the earth goddess as well, as even though she loved Orion, she loved the wild more. The scorpion was also put into the stars as Scorpio, as a message not to anger Gaia and to respect the earth and its creatures. The gods also made sure that Orion and Scorpio were at opposite ends of the sky, so that they would never meet again.
With a striking shape and eye-catching stars, Orion has a very long history going back into the mists of time. The constellation’s appearance and movements were observed intently and strongly linked to hunting, agriculture, the seasons and the weather. Many people saw in those stars the figure of a powerful man: a hunter, a leader, a god. Because they are visible worldwide, Orion’s stars feature in the stellar lore of most cultures.
It may be that the earliest depiction of Orion as a human might date back 32,000 years, carved into a mammoth tusk found inside a German cave. In ancient Mesopotamia, Orion was the Heavenly Shepherd, a messenger to the gods. The constellation was also said to represent the hero king Gilgamesh (though others say Gilgamesh’s constellation is Hercules).
In India, the constellation has several names, including Mriga the stag, pursuing Rohini the Red Deer (the star Aldebaran), with an arrow in his side represented by the belt stars. Another Indian interpretation of Orion was Nataraja, the Cosmic Dancer, a form of the god Shiva.
The Chinese call these stars Shen, representing a hunter or warrior with a bow, or a hunting scene. That’s not the only similarity with the Greek Orion: the Chinese also noticed that Orion and Scorpio are opposite each other in the sky. One story says Shen is the antagonist of Xin, a star group in Scorpio, and that’s why when Shen is visible, Xin is not, and vice versa.
To Ancient Egyptians, Orion was a celestial aspect of Osiris, the great god of the afterlife, whose dying and resurrecting was mirrored in the stars, as Orion became invisible for a period of time, and then rose again in the sky. You might have heard the theory that the Pyramids of Giza were built to align with Orion’s belt. This may be disputed, but a south-facing shaft in Khufu’s pyramid chamber was made to align with Orion, linking the pharaoh to Osiris.
In North America, the Ojibwe call him the Winter Maker, who brings the cold, while the Navajo call him the Long Slim One, whose setting in spring marks the sowing season.
Near the equator and moving towards the southern hemisphere, Orion has a different orientation. To the Yolngu of Australia, the constellation is a canoe with three fishermen in the middle-the stars we know as the hunter’s belt. In Tonga, they also see Orion as a canoe with three people inside.
Orion’s Belt is special enough to warrant its own folklore. In France and Spain it is known as the Three Kings, probably because it is visible around Christmas and these stars point towards Sirius, the brightest star, in the east. In Latin America the three stars are called Tres Marias (Three Marys). To the Maya of Central America, the belt, the sword and the two stars either side of it are called the Hearth, with the nebulosity in the sword representing embers or smoke. The Tswana of Botswana see the belt as representing three warthogs, and the San of the Kalahari in South Africa call those stars the three zebras.
And this is just scratching the surface, regarding the wide canon of star lore about this region of space. But the stars within the constellation have much to say as well…
You may have heard of Betelgeuse, even just because of its distinctive name. This extraordinary star, glowing blood-orange on the right shoulder of Orion, is a gargantuan red supergiant. If you replaced the Sun with Betelgeuse, it would swallow up the Earth and Mars and stop just short of Jupiter. At about 500 light years away, you’re looking at light that left the star during the reign of Henry VIII. But Betelgeuse is on borrowed time. Any time in the next million years, it will end its life as a dazzling supernova that will outshine the moon for a few weeks as seen from Earth!
The constellation’s brightest star is Rigel, in the hunter’s left foot or knee, the seventh brightest star in the sky. It glows an icy blue white, a beautiful contrast with reddish Betelgeuse. But don’t let its cool hue fool you. At 12000C, this star is way hotter than the Sun. With stars, the whiter or bluer a star is, the hotter it is, whereas redder stars are cooler. Rigel is about 900 light years away, and yet it is so bright, showing what an extraordinarily powerful star it is.
Underneath the three belt stars is a fainter line of stars representing the hunter’s sword. This is where you’ll find the Orion Nebula, the brightest and closest star-forming region to earth, also known as M42 or Messier 42 (named after Charles Messier who compiled a list of astronomical objects. This is the 42nd object on his list). As the Moon will have set and isn’t even very bright, this is a good time to see if you can spot the Orion Nebula without optical aids. A dark sky helps, but I live in light pollution and on the clearest of nights, I can see it with the naked eye, looking like a smudge in the sword. But look at it through binoculars or a telescope and it will bloom into an ethereal cloud of glowing dust and gas surrounding a core of stars. This is a stellar birthplace of young stars. The Trapezium, a tight group of four stars in the nebula’s centre, can be seen with a telescope. Recent observations by the James Webb space telescope also show planet like objects drifting through the stardust.
Orion has such a presence, I can almost feel him when I see him looming over me on winter nights, watching over the sleeping world. This most human shaped of constellations symbolises the story of humankind’s complicated relationship with nature through the hunt, and cycles of dying and rising and seasonal change. And this is mirrored in the constellation itself, where sagas of death and rebirth play out in nebulous clouds and giant stars living to excess. In Orion, science finds stories just as epic as the ones dreamed up by our imaginations to explain the giant, powerful hunter in the dark.
But on these festive nights, you might see something more whimsical in those stars. I like to reimagine Orion as Jack Frost, for he tends to come when nights get chilly and crisp and the land sparkles as much as the sky.
There is so much, too much even, to say about Orion that I can’t fit it all here. Hopefully, if CPRE brings back the Star Count in 2025 (in which you count the stars of Orion to check your light pollution levels), I have plans for a series of posts about Orion during that period, to add context and depth to the stars you will be counting. There will be detailed looks at individual stars, the science of massive star birth and death, and lots of history, lore and myth. Even if the star count doesn’t return, I hope to do an Orion series to add some light to the bleak midwinter.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Orion
Everywhere you go
He’s still chasing the Pleiades, up there in the winter freeze
And Sirius is shining down below
It’s beginning to look a lot like Orion
Hunter of the stars
But if you look above this year, you’ll see two planets near
Jupiter and Mars!
A threefold prompt:
one for each star on the hunter’s belt:
-What dreams are you chasing or hunting? Are these dreams that are half-formed and nebulous, waiting to become stars, or defined targets that you have your sights on?
-How can you be conscious of your actions and impact on the environment, so you don’t get stung?
-and a prompt inspired by the belt itself: write down three words representing three qualities that you would like to have girded around you like a magical belt, to take you through deep winter and/or the new year.
Something extra
Here’s a song about Orion in all his wintry finery, a great alternative to the usual jingles and sparkly tunes you’ll hear everywhere this season!