• Ori - Orion the Hunter

    IAU Constellation
    Ori - Orion the Hunter

    Size

    26 of 88
    Astronomical Regions
    Equatorial
    Northern
    Southern

    Intro and Visual description

    Three stars in a row make up Orion’s belt, within a rectangle of four bright stars representing his shoulders and feet. At sunset in the autumn, Orion’s belt appears to rise straight up on the horizon. The sword hanging from his belt includes M42, the beautiful Orion nebula.

    Since Orion’s belt of three bright stars lies upon the celestial equator, Orion is visible from every inhabited part of the globe.

  • M42 - Great Orion Nebula

    Object image

    M42, Orion Nebula, NASA, Hubble Space Telescope

    Object image source

    Hubble Space Telescope, NASA
    Permission
    Public domain

    A sword hanging from Orion's belt at first sight looks like three stars, but the middle one is ill-defined. With binoculars you can tell that it is not a star, but a cloudy region, called the Great Orion Nebula. A powerful telescope reveals the nebula to be a giant cloud of luminous gas, a cosmic nursery where stars are now being born. Through the Hubble space telescope the Great Orion Nebula becomes a colorful and awesome spectacle, over 20,000 times larger than our solar system. 

  • Fusion Image 5

    Source: Johann Bode, Uranographia (Berlin, 1801); History of Science Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries
    Object: M42 in Orion, the Great Orion Nebula; Hubble Space Telescope, NASA
    Composite: The Sky Tonight, skytonight.org (CC-by)

    Object description

    The sword hanging from Orion’s belt includes M42, the Orion nebula.  M42 is the only nebula visible to the unaided eye, without binoculars or a telescope, yet it displays beautiful wonders accessible in any telescope.

    Fusion Image 5
    Constellations IAU Abbr
    Ori

    Constellation description

    Orion the Hunter is included in the ancient star catalogs of Eudoxos of Knidos, Aratos of Soli, and Ptolemy.  Three stars in a row make up Orion’s belt, within a rectangle of four bright stars representing his shoulders and feet. At sunset in the autumn, Orion’s belt appears to rise straight up on the horizon. Since Orion’s belt of three bright stars lies upon the celestial equator, Orion is visible from every inhabited part of the globe.

    Source Description

    Bode’s magnificent atlas fused artistic beauty and scientific precision. 20 large copperplate engravings plot more than 17,000 stars, far more than any previous atlas. Bode depicted more than 100 constellations, compared with 88 officially recognized today. Bode also included 2,500 cloudy patches, or “nebulae,” cataloged by William Herschel.  Bode, director of the Observatory of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, produced the last of the four major celestial atlases in which artful depictions of constellation figures appear alongside the most up-to-date scientific data.

    Bode-1801