Orion, the Hunter of the Winter Sky

Orion is among the most brilliant and recognisable of all constellations, one of Ptolemy's forty-eight, named for the giant hunter of Greek myth. Its distinctive form is unmistakable: the three bright stars of the Belt in a row, the red supergiant Betelgeuse at one shoulder, the blue-white Rigel at the opposite foot, and the Sword hanging from the Belt, where the great Orion Nebula glows. It dominates the winter evening sky of the northern hemisphere and has been recognised as a striding figure across many cultures. In myth Orion the hunter was slain and set among the stars, forever pursuing or pursued. In astronomical tradition it is a star pattern rather than a zodiac sign, though it lies just south of the ecliptic. These are the features of Orion as the classical and modern traditions describe it.

Orion's status as one of the very oldest recognised sky-figures is unusually well attested outside the Greek tradition: a hunter or a related figure appears in this same stretch of sky in Egyptian, Mesopotamian and many other independent traditions, most strikingly in the Egyptian identification of Orion's belt with the god Osiris, an association some archaeoastronomers have controversially connected to the layout of the Giza pyramids, a claim that remains disputed rather than established among Egyptologists.