Northern Stars of Winter: Orion |
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The winter night skies are alive with ancient stories. Hunters, dogs and horses, giants and a female warrior inhabit Orion in this guest article from Claire Nahmad. Look for Orion in the Winter months, the most majestic of the constellations. It rises in the East and sails in brilliant splendour between the horizon and the zenith and sets almost due West. Its four bright starts form a quadrilateral, in the midst of which are three stars almost as radiant, slanting downwards.
In the top right-hand corner is the star Bellatrix (Female Warrior). The quadrilateral’s south east corner is formed by Kappa, a second magnitude star. The Great Nebula in Orion is famous and is situated in the Sword of Orion - represented by a line of three stars; it is a cloud bed of shining cosmic dust, illumined by the radiance of the stars which cluster in it, at rest deep in outer-space. The Giant’s Shoulder forms a beautifully luminous equilateral triangle with Sirius in the Great Dog (Canis Procyon Major) and in the Little Dog (Canis Minor). This Great Triangle is one of the most vivid constellations of the heavens. Procyon is golden, while Sirius glitters with a snow-and-sea, blue-white radiance. Sirius, the Dog Star, is the most powerful in the star group of Canis Major, as beautiful and brilliant as our own rising sun when viewed through a telescope, try it and absorb the light vibrations of a unique, single star. The intensity of its light is due to the fact that it is a near star. Orion was a giant hunter, noble and beautiful in form and face. He was blinded by an enemy (Enipion) but the god Vulcan sent Celadion to be his guide, and his eyes were healed by turning them to the sun. Diana, female warrior and huntress, put him to death, whereupon he was transfigured into one of the constellations. He is supposed to be attended by stormy weather, representative of the passions which played about his mortal life. Every hunter has a horse and a dog; the dogs which accompany Orion are well-known features of the heavens; less well known is the Horsehead nebula in Orion, which literally resembles a horse’s head. From Claire Nahmad’s ‘Earth Magic’, A wisewoman’s guide to herbal, astrological and other folk remedies. Rider. 1993. ISBN 0-7126-5610-3
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Its brightest star, at the top, left-hand corner of the quadrilateral, is Alpha Orionis, or Beltegeux (Giant’s Shoulder) which glows with red-ember light. Rigel, the star in the lower right-hand corner, glitters with a blue-white radiance and is more vivid than Beltegeux; it is Orion’s second star and was once less powerful than the Giant’s shoulder. Its name means ‘Giant’s Leg’.