The Orion constellation is one of the most easily recognized and prominent in the winter night sky. Three particularly bright stars located very close to each other, Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka, make Orion's belt. Above and below the belt are two pairs of very bright stars, making Orion's shoulders and knees. Orion's left shoulder is the star Betelgeuse (pronounced "beetle juice"), which glows reddish-orange. Betelgeuse is one of the largest visible objects in the night sky, with a diameter larger than the orbit of Mars! In contrast Rigel, the star of Orion's right knee is the brightest in the constellation, giving off a blue-white glow.
At Wolf Ridge, there is one story about Orion in our Star Lab (inflatable planetarium) lesson plan. As I've read and researched more about the protagonist, I can find no other accounts of this particular story. Nonetheless, it's one of my favorites, so I will share it here. Maybe in a future blog post, I'll share other stories of this constellation that I've found elsewhere.
Orion was a strong, very good looking hunter, who enjoyed to hunt for nocturnal critters. At day, he would rest under a tree in the woods and at night, he was out hunting. While hunting, he ended up catching the eye of an admirer: Artemis, the goddess of the moon. Artemis' job was to drive a chariot, pulling the moon across the sky each night and every night, she would watch Orion, longing to join him. One night, she petitioned her father, Zeus, for the chance to go meet Orion. Zeus, truly nervous at the thought of his daughter, grown as she may be, wanting to go meet a man, insisted that she had a job to do, thus she was not allowed to go meet Orion.
However, every night, Artemis' longing grew stronger until, eventually, she took matters into her own hands, parking the chariot with the moon in the middle of the sky. She went down to the earth and met Orion; of course, it was love at first sight. Orion and Artemis began to spend lots of time together as Orion taught Artemis how to hunt and Artemis taught Orion the ways of the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus.
Zeus, thoroughly upset by this developing romance, decided that he needed to make it stop, by removing Orion from the picture entirely. He recruited Scorpio the scorpion to take care of Orion, but Zeus required the assassin to make it look like an accident so that he would remain blameless in his daughter's eyes. The scorpion found Orion and Artemis, napping under Orion's favorite tree. Sneaking up on the great hunter, it only took one sting to kill him. Artemis, waking immediately, realized what had happened and, in her anguish, grabbed the scorpion by the tail and flung him into the sky.
To honor Orion, Artemis took his body and placed it in the night sky, where she could be with him every night. She was very intentional about the placement, though, because she didn't want Orion to ever have to face the scorpion again. So, as the constellation of Orion rises in the east, the constellation of Scorpius sets in the west. Zeus, realizing the sadness he had caused his daughter, decided to allow Orion to remain in the night sky and that is where he and Artemis spend every night together to this very day.
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