A little ramble through the winter sky - Orion

 One of the most spectacular constellations in the sky is Orion the Hunter. Its four main stars form a giant rectangle in the sky and in the middle of this rectangle are three stars that from Orion’s Belt. Orion is seen at its best during January and February. Orion can easily be seen from around 7.00pm in the evenings.

According to mythology Orion boasted that he could kill any living creature and one day when he was boasting to a large crowd of people of all the animals he had killed, he did not see a scorpion that had crept up behind him, then stung him on the ankle and killed him. The gods however were so impressed with Orion’s boasting that he was placed in the sky forever, but so too was the clever Scorpion. To make sure that they can never meet again, Orion is in the winter sky while the Scorpion is in the summer sky.

If you look at the four main stars of Orion  that form the rectangle and the three belt stars they all appear blue/white in colour apart from Betelgeuse the top left-hand star of the rectangle. Betelgeuse or Beetlejuice as many people like to call it is an old star and a cool star it appears red in the sky while younger and hotter stars appear blue/white.

It is believed that Betelgeuse will destroy itself in a massive explosion that astronomers call a supernova sometime in the next one million years.

Just below the three stars that form the belt of Orion is a fuzzy patch that can be seen with the naked eye. This is the Orion Nebula, an area where stars are being created now. There are several hundred stars forming there. The Orion Nebula is a stellar nursery.

The star names can sometimes seem a bit strange to us; this is because they are not English names but are mostly Arabic names. If you look at the top right-hand star of the rectangle you will see Bellatrix which in Arabic means either the Conqueror or the Amazon Star, Bellatrix is one of many star and constellation names that appear in the Harry Potter stories, if you are a fan you will know Bellatrix Lestrange. 

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