My favorite constellation is Orion the Hunter. Within its boundaries the mighty hunter has two stars of the top 10 brightest stars in the night sky, and no other constellation has those bragging rights. He possesses many celestial treasures. Orion is also one of those few constellations that actually comes close to looking like what he’s supposed to be.
In early February at the start of evening darkness, Orion stands proudly upright about halfway from the southern horizon to overhead. At first glance it may remind you of a giant hourglass or a sideways bowtie. According to Greek and Roman mythology the constellation outlines the body of a well-built barrel-chested man with a trim waistline. Orion is wearing a belt made up of three bright stars perfectly lined up in a row.
Nowhere else in the sky from Earth will you see three stars this bright lined up so perfectly in a row — Alnitak, Alniham, and Mintaka. They have nothing to do with each other physically. They just happen to line up as they do from our view on Earth. Coincidence, or not?
You have to remind yourself that when you’re looking at constellations you’re actually looking at three-dimensional pictures. The distances to Orion’s belt stars from Earth vary by literally hundreds of light years. Just one light year is nearly six trillion miles. Alnitak is a little over 800 light years away, Alniham is nearly 2,000 light years distant, and a trip to Mintaka would require a journey of around 900 light years. By the way, even if you had a spaceship that could travel at 25,000 miles an hour it would still take you well over 200 billion years to reach Mintaka.
Just below Orion’s bright belt stars are three more stars lined up vertically that are not nearly as bright, but are visible to the naked eye. These lesser shiners depict the sword of Orion. Even with the naked eye, though, you can see there’s something funky about that middle sword star. It’s fuzzy. With a small telescope or even a pair of binoculars you’ll see that the fuzz has a little structure and a bit of greenish glow to it.
That’s the famous Orion Nebula, a gigantic 25-plus light year wide cloud of hydrogen gas and dust assembled a little more than 1,500 light years away. The light we see from that cloud left it around the year 500 AD when the great Roman empire was in steep decline. With a small to moderate telescope pointed toward the middle of the nebula, you’ll see a very tight cluster of four stars in the shape of a trapezoid. These are infant stars that formed randomly and gravitationally out of this loose cloud of hydrogen, the most visible element in our universe. These stars may be only 300,000 years old, and are showing signs of developing new solar systems of their own. Astronomers don’t know for sure, but one of the stars may be less than 50,000 years old. That’s a celestial newborn. These baby stars are very energetic, like a two year old on a severe sugar high. They kick out so much ultraviolent radiation that it causes the surrounding hydrogen gas to glow like a florescent light. If you can view the Orion Nebula in the countryside it is really something to behold.
Another highlight of Orion is its second bright star, Betelgeuse. It’s pronounced by most as beetle-juice. It’s an Arabic name that roughly translates to English as “armpit of the great one.”
Astronomically Betelgeuse is considered a super red giant star about 500 million miles in diameter, but at times it may swell out to around 1 billion miles in diameter. With just the naked eye you can see it’s reddish hue. It’s a bloated dying star running out of nuclear fuel in its core. Stars as massive as Betelgeuse become highly unstable when they’re running on empty and eventually explode in a colossal explosion called a supernova. This could happen fairly soon for Betelgeuse … maybe in just a few weeks, but much more likely in the next several million years. I wouldn’t wait up for it.
There’s a lot more in the way of celestial treasure in and around Orion. My advice is to bundle up, sit back in a comfortable lawn chair with a decent telescope, and scan that whole area. I guarantee you’ll have a great time with the great nocturnal hunter.
Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis and is author of the book, “Stars, a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations” published by Adventure Publications available at bookstores at http://www.adventurepublications.net
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