If I remember correctly, I think I was overly excited when I pointed out the constellation, orion (for real, without any pretence!) while we were having the BBQ that day. So yeah, now I’m back to give further explanations to that, because I was pretty sure most, if not all of them present didn’t even managed to locate the constellation. Here are the explanations with pictures!

Alright, for starters, the orion happens to be among one of the many constellations (leo, aries, taurus, gemini and etc) that line the galaxy and that it is actually a possible task to locate them by the unaided eye. However, due to Singapore’s brightly lit city landscape, locating these constellations could prove to be quite a headache. Nonetheless, it is still possible, if you happen to be in an area that is reasonably dark.

Basically, orion, according to Greek Mythology, was a gigantic hunter of primodial times. One of the myths suggest that orion was killed by this pretty huge scorpion, while another mentioned that orion was actually chasing after Pleiades - the seven sisters , the daughters of some renowned Greek gods who were kind of drop dead gorgeous. But then again, that’s besides the point. Coincidentally, these seven sisters were represented in the night sky by a cluster, dominated by hot blue stars, otherwise known as the AKA M45 - Pleiades. Another trivia to this: The seven sisters are rather popular these days because they embrace the logos of modern cars, SUBARU - the japanese name for Pleiades. Apparently too, old texts such as the Bible, Quran and others did mentioned the existence of such a constellation. In the Quran, according to the Islamic Scholars, refered the Pleiades as At-Thuraiya, Star of Najm.


The SUBARU logo depicts the 6 stars that are visible by the unaided eye. However, in reality, it is really quite possible to see all 7 of them. The small 5 stars in the logo represent the 5 smaller companies that merged to become one large company.


So why is orion a popular constellation? From what I’ve gathered, there are 2 general reasons. Firstly, from the orion constellation, we’re able to locate, with the use of the telescope of course, the home of the famous nebulae – the Horsehead Nebula. You have to zoom towards the Alnitak star of the orion belt in the constellation to see that horse head. Below is a picture of the renowed Horsehead nebula as well as the star Alnitak.



Secondly, the constellation orion – a very prominent sight in the night sky, allows the identification of other celestial objects. Among them, is the winter triangle, as shown below.


I’m pretty sure, one might ask, why in the world do 3 stars in a line, enclosed by a rectangle represent a Greek individual – orion. How does it even represent a human figure? what more a hunter with a sword and a belt! Yeah, it doesn’t make any sense initially to me at first but I guessed, it was the creativity of the old, really old people back then, that allowed us to have a clearer vision of what was seen in the night sky. They needed to relate it to something so that it could be translated to the children of future generations. These “really old” guys really do have a talent for coming up with complex images by drawing lines that joined the dots in the sky. It can be quite a headache to attempt to visualise something so abstract, in say an image of 6 dots!


Nonetheless, we owe their creative minds, curiosity and surprisingly detailed observational studies of the sky for the modern day science, we call astronomy.

That’s something new, we can learn today!
Waiting for a star to fall :)
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