Orion the Hunter is the king of constellations as far as I’m concerned, and there are many other stargazers in that same stellar camp! It’s at the summit of the constellation pyramid.

Even if you’re not much into stargazing, you can’t help but notice the mighty celestial hunter prowling westward across the Butler winter heavens. It’s one of the few constellations that actually resembles what it’s supposed to be. With just a passing glance, you can easily see Orion's torso with his broad shoulders and gigantic thighs.

I have to be honest though. To me, Orion also resembles a giant hourglass in the high early evening southern sky. In this week’s Starwatch column, I want to tell you about some of Orion’s many astronomical treasures. Next week will be story time as I share some of the great mythological tales involving the great constellation.

Armed with enough layers of clothes, boots, and your warmest hat, you can brave the February cold to check out the big guy. Something warm to sip on really helps as well! If you can be out in the countryside, great, but even in suburban skies compromised with moderate light pollution, you’ll like what you see. Binoculars and/or a small telescope add to the fun but are not absolutely required.

Orion’s great calling card is, without a doubt, his belt, made up of three bright stars close together in a darn near straight line. Even though the belt stars Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka look close together, they are physically nowhere near each other. They’re not only hundreds of light-years from Earth but hundreds of light-years from each other. Call it a celestial coincidence or divine intervention that these stars line up as orderly as they do from our heavenly perch in our part of the vast Milky Way galaxy.

Orion nebula

Below Orion’s belt stars are three more stars in a short line that aren’t quite as bright. That trio makes up Orion’s sword, and without too much eyestrain you can see that the middle star is “fuzzy.” Actually, that’s not a star. It’s a star factory, or nursery, called the great Orion Nebula. It’s over 1500 light years away, with just one light year equaling nearly 6 trillion miles! It’s a gigantic cloud of hydrogen gas, and with a small telescope or even a decent pair of binoculars, you can see what’s known as the trapezium, a tiny cluster of four stars near the center.

These infant stars were born gravitationally out of this giant mass of hydrogen gas over the last million years or so. One of the stars may be as young as 50,000 years old, which is extremely young when you’re talking stellar. Space telescopes have detected what may be planets developing around the new stars.

The reason we see the Orion Nebula as well as we do is that it’s literally being lit up like a fluorescent light. The very young and highly active stars hidden within the nebula emit so much intense radiation that the atomic structure of the surrounding gas is disrupted, causing it to glow brightly. The visible portion is just a tiny part of the Orion Nebula. There’s a lot more to it that isn’t glowing but nonetheless contains thousands and thousands of developing stars.

Another of Orion’s celestial hallmarks is the bright star Betelgeuse in the upper left corner of the Hunter. Like many stars, Betelgeuse has an Arabic name. Arabic culture in the Middle Ages and earlier cataloged the night sky; many traditional star names are still in use today. What I love about the name Betelgeuse is that it roughly translates to English as “armpit of the great one.” As you can see in the diagram, Betelgeuse marks Orion's armpit.

Astronomically, Betelgeuse is one of the single biggest things you’ve ever seen. It’s considered a super red giant star, and you can detect its reddish hue even with the naked eye. Betelgeuse fluctuates in diameter from about a half billion miles to nearly a billion miles. Our home star, the sun, isn’t even a million miles in diameter. Betelgeuse is over 500 light-years from Earth and is dying a slow death that someday will turn extremely violent!

Presently, it’s using up all the hydrogen and helium fuel in its core. When that happens, extremely massive stars like Betelgeuse become extremely unstable, and eventually, the star explodes spectacularly. This is called a supernova explosion. Many astronomers think this could happen to Betelgeuse within a million years, maybe even next week. I wouldn’t wait for it outside sitting in your lawn chair; you could be there for a while!

The constellation Orion has many more astronomical treasures, but its belt, the Orion Nebula, and Betelgeuse are the big three. What I also love about Orion are all the bright stars and constellations surrounding the great heavenly hunter. I like to call this part of the sky “Orion and his Gang.” I just love this part of the night sky, and I know you’ll fall in love with it too.

Next week, I’ll tell you some of the mythological stories and legends of Orion, my favorite constellation!

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and retired broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is the author of "Stars: a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations," published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and adventurepublications.net. Contact him at mikewlynch@comcast.net.