El Orion's belt is known as an asterism in the constellation Orion, it consists of three bright stars, the asterism is more commonly known as the Three Wise Men and is among the brightest and most defined asterisms in the winter sky, it is often used to locate the constellation of Orion.
What does Orion's Belt mean?
The constellation of Orion is known as one of the brightest and most accredited constellations in the night sky, it is positioned right on the celestial equator.
Orion has been followed since ancient times, in turn known as Hunter, as it is related to one in Greek mythology, it personifies the mythical hunter Orion, who is often symbolized on star charts as challenging Taurus, the bull, harassing the Pleiades sisters, personified by the famous open set or chasing the hare with its two hunters, personified by the nearby constellations Canis Major and Canis Minor.
Look Orion's Belt in the night sky is the easiest way to find Orion in the sky, Stars they are more or less uniformly in a straight line and therefore can be thought of as a hunter's belt, they are best seen in the night sky during northern winter and southern in summer, specifically the month of January around 9:00 p.m.
Visibility
Orion is visible in the night sky from November to February, it is in the southwestern sky if you are in the northern hemisphere or in the northwestern sky if you are in the southern hemisphere, it is best seen between latitudes 85 and minus 75 degrees, its straight rise is five hours, and its decline is five degrees.
Alnilam, Mintaka and Alnitak are the stars that patronize Orion's Belt, they are the most prominent stars in the Orion constellation. Betelgeuse, recognized as the second most radiant star in Orion, establishes the hunter's right shoulder. Bellatrix is established as Orion's left shoulder.
With an inequality, all the important stars in Orion are big and bright blue or supergiants, ranging from Bellatrix to Alnilam, the Orion nebula is farther away than any of the stars that are observed in a path of about 1.600 light years, A light year is the distance that light travels in a single year, about six billion miles.
The exception is the star Betelgeuse, which is a red giant and one of the largest stars ever seen, in turn the only star in the sky suitably large and close enough that it was recorded as a disk by the Hubble Space Telescope. viewers with a keen eye would be incumbent on being able to see the discrepancy in color between Betelgeuse and all the other stars in Orion.
Stars visible to the naked eye
The names of the three stars come from Arabic, Alnilam means "pearl necklace" which are mentioned below:
Alnitak
It is a triple star system at the eastern end of the Orion's belt and 1.260 light years from Earth. Alnitak B is a fourth magnitude B-type star that orbits Alnitak A every 1500 years, the primary is itself a close binary containing Alnitak Aa, a blue supergiant of spectral type O9.7 Ibe and an apparent magnitude of 2.0.
Alnitak Ab is a blue dwarf of spectral type O9V and an apparent magnitude of about 4, Alnitak Aa is estimated to be up to 28 times more massive than the Sun and 20 times larger in diameter, it is the brightest O-class star in the sky night.
Alnilam
It is a supergiant, approximately 2000 light years from Earth and a magnitude of 1.70, it is the 29th brightest star in the sky and the fourth brightest in Orion, it is 375,000 times brighter than the Sun, its spectrum serves as one of the stable anchor points by which other stars are classified.
mintaka
It is 1200 light-years away and shines at magnitude 2.21. Mintaka is 90,000 times more luminous than the Sun. Mintaka is a double star, the two stars revolve around each other every 5,73 days.
Nebulae
The Orion Nebula is one of the most studied and photographed objects in the night sky, and is one of the most intensively studied celestial features. The nebula has revealed much about the process of how stars and planetary systems form from collapsing clouds of gas and dust.
Horsehead Nebula
La Nebula Horsehead is part of the much larger Orion Cloud, many of the works of fiction below use nebula in the form of clouds of more or less impenetrable darkness, others imagine many stars and planets in front of the interior and especially behind the nebula .
flame nebula
It is an emission nebula located in the constellation of Orion, the Hunter, the nebula is located at a distance of approximately 1.350 light years from Earth and has an apparent magnitude of 2, the Flame Nebula occupies an area 30 minutes from arc of apparent sky, is part of a vast star-forming region known as the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex.
The Flame Nebula is home to a group of several hundred very young stars, 86 percent of these stars have circumstellar disks, the youngest members are concentrated near the center of the group, while the oldest members are found in the outer regions.
This was revealed in a study using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Lookout, the Spitzer Space Telescope, the UK's Infrared Telescope and the 2MASS telescope, which found that the stars at the center of the cluster possessed only a few 200,000 years, while in foreign countries they were about 1,5 million years old.
CI-434
Located in the constellation Orion the Hunter, the Horsehead is part of a thick cloud of gas in front of an active star-alignment nebula credited as IC434, the radiant star Sigma Orionis is professed to stimulate the Horsehead nebulosity, which is It is above the top of the image.
Messier 78
It is an interstellar dust cloud located about 1.600 light-years from Earth, it is illuminated in an extension of four light-years by the energy of its embedded, bright, B-type stars, which emit a continuous spectrum, in the area there are 45 low-mass stars with hydrogen emission lines, irregular variable stars similar to the T Tauri star, which may well be in the early stages of their stellar life.
Orion's Belt Stellar Association
The Orion OB1 stellar association is known as an eventual team of dozens of different huge stars of spectral type O and B, grouped together are thousands of low-mass stars and a smaller but characteristic one, it is part of the larger Orion Cloud, Due to its respective closeness and complexity, it is identified as the most studied OB association.
The Orion OB1 association is made up of the following subgroups:
- Orion OB1a: The group of stars northwest of the Orion Belt with an average age of about 12 million years, within this group is another subgroup known as the Orionis 5 group.
- Orion OB1b: The three bright stars of Ori (Alnitak), Ori (Alnilam) and Ori (Mintaka) that constitute the asterism called "Orion Belt" and minor stars, this group has an average age of approximately 8 million years and is subdivided into three subgroups.
- Orion OB1c: The stars in Orion's sword, 3-6 million years.
- Orions OB1d: The stars of the Orion nebula and M43 (the youngest stars).
Cultural tradition of Orion's Belt
Orion is a very popular constellation in various cultures, for example:
- In Australia, the stars that establish Orion's Belt and Sword are sometimes referred to as Olla or Cacerolam.
- In South Africa, the three stars of the Orion's belt they are well positioned as Drie Konings, it is related to the three wise men or Drie Susters, which is the same as the three sisters.
- In Spain and Latin America, the stars are called Las Tres Marías or Las Tres Marías.
- The belt of three stars is known in Portugal and South America as Las Tres Marias, they also mark the northern night sky when the sun is at its lowest and were a clear marker for ancient timekeeping.
- In the Philippines and Puerto Rico, they are called Los Tres Reyes Magos, the stars begin to appear in early January during Epiphany, a Christian holiday that commemorates the visit of the Three Kings to the Baby Jesus.
- In Seri, the people of northwestern Mexico call the three stars of the ribbon Hapj (the name denoting the hunter), which is made up of three stars, Hap (deer mule), Haamoja (Pronghorn), and Mojet (rams). . Hap is in the middle and a hunter shot him, his blood dripping onto Tiburon Island.
- In Men in Black, the protagonists search for the Characteristics of Galaxies, a massive source of energy, which according to the alien is "in the Orion's beltSearching for the celestial Orion's Belt, but no galaxy to be found there, eventually, they realize the galaxy is hidden in a jewel around the neck of an alien cat named Orion.
