![]() ![]() He declared to Artemis, the goddess of hunting, and Leto, her mother, that he could kill any beast on Earth. ![]() In one version, told by Eratosthenes and Hyginus, Orion boasted that he was the greatest of hunters. Astronomical mythographers such as Aratus, Eratosthenes and Hyginus were agreed that a scorpion was involved. Stories of the death of Orion are numerous and conflicting. Zeus snatched the group up and placed them among the stars, where Orion still pursues them across the sky each night. But according to Hyginus, it was actually their mother Pleione he was after. As the story is usually told, Orion fell in love with the Pleiades and pursued them with amorous intent. The Pleiades were seven sisters, daughters of Atlas and Pleione. Orion is linked in a stellar myth with the Pleiades star cluster in Taurus. As the Sun’s healing rays fell on his sightless eyes at dawn, Orion’s vision was miraculously restored. Hoisting the youth on his shoulders, Orion headed east towards the sunrise, which an oracle had told him would restore his sight. Hephaestus took pity on the blind Orion and offered one of his assistants, Cedalion, to act as his eyes. Orion headed north to the island of Lemnos where Hephaestus had his forge. In punishment, Oenopion put out Orion’s eyes and banished him from the island. On the island of Chios, Orion wooed Merope, daughter of King Oenopion, apparently without much success, for one night while fortified with wine he tried to ravish her. In the sky, the hunter’s dogs (the constellations Canis Major and Canis Minor) follow at his heels, in pursuit of the hare (the constellation Lepus). Homer in the Odyssey describes Orion as a giant hunter, armed with an unbreakable club of solid bronze. Poseidon gave Orion the power to walk on water. Despite these parallels, no mythologist hints at a connection between this constellation and Heracles.Īccording to myth, Orion was the son of Poseidon, the sea-god, and Euryale, daughter of King Minos of Crete. Ptolemy described him with club and lion’s pelt, both familiar attributes of Heracles, and he is shown this way on old star maps. Orion might be Heracles in another guise, for one of the labours of Heracles was to catch the Cretan bull, which would fit the Orion – Taurus conflict in the sky. Being the greatest hero of Greek mythology, Heracles deserves a magnificent constellation such as this one, but in fact is consigned to a much more obscure area of sky. Gilgamesh was the Sumerian equivalent of Heracles, which brings us to another puzzle. The Sumerian name for Orion was URU AN-NA, meaning light of heaven. However, the constellation originated with the Sumerians, who saw in it their great hero Gilgamesh fighting the Bull of Heaven. In the sky, Orion is depicted facing the snorting charge of neighbouring Taurus, yet the myth of Orion makes no reference to such a combat. Orion’s right shoulder is marked by the bright star Betelgeuse, and his left foot by Rigel. Orion raises his club and shield against the charging Taurus as illustrated on Chart XII in the Uranographia of Johann Bode (1801). Even in the space age, Orion remains one of the few star patterns that non-astronomers can recognize. Orion is also one of the most ancient constellations, being among the few star groups known to the earliest Greek writers such as Homer and Hesiod. In fact, Orion is not an exceptionally large constellation, ranking only 26th in size, but the brilliance of its stars gives it the illusion of being much larger. Manilius described Orion as “stretching his arms over a vast expanse of sky and rising to the stars with no less huge a stride”. Manilius called it ‘golden Orion’ and ‘the mightiest of constellations’, and exaggerated its brilliance by saying that, when Orion rises, ‘night feigns the brightness of day and folds its dusky wings’. “No other constellation more accurately represents the figure of a man”, said Germanicus Caesar. His right shoulder and left foot are marked by the brilliant stars Betelgeuse and Rigel, with a distinctive line of three stars forming his belt. Orion, one of the 48 Greek constellations listed by Ptolemy in the Almagest, is the most splendid of constellations, befitting a character who was in legend the tallest and most handsome of men. Orion, the hunter, is not proudly standing on his feet, but rather doing a cart-wheel □ Fletcher (1930-2017) once said: “In astronomy circles, it is often remarked that God, in creating the universe, perversely located all the most interesting regions of our galaxy in the Southern Hemisphere, but all the astronomers in the north.” As a result, it can be more difficult to pick out in the Southern Hemisphere the shapes for which the constellations were originally named. ![]()
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