ORION CONTINUED >>
There is a strange and persistent story
about the birth of Orion, designed to account for the early
version of his name, Urion (even closer to the Sumerian
original URU AN-NA). According to this story, there lived in Thebes an
old farmer named Hyrieus. One day he offered hospitality to
three passing strangers, who happened to be the gods Zeus,
Neptune and Hermes. After they had eaten, the visitors asked
Hyrieus if he had any wishes. The old man confessed that he
would have liked a son, and the three gods promised to fulfil
his wish. Standing together around the hide of the ox they had
just consumed, the gods urinated on it and told Hyrieus to bury
the hide. From it in due course was born a boy whom Hyrieus
named Urion after the mode of his conception.
Orion is one of several constellations in
which the star labelled Alpha is not the brightest. The
brightest star in Orion is actually Beta Orionis, called Rigel
from the Arabic rijl meaning ‘foot’ since Ptolemy
described it as ‘the bright star in the left foot’.
Ptolemy also said it was shared with the river Eridanus, and
some old charts depict it in this dual role. Rigel is a
brilliant blue-white supergiant.
Alpha Orionis is called Betelgeuse
(pronounced BET-ell-juice), one of the most famous yet
misunderstood star names. It comes from the Arabic yad al-jauza, often
wrongly translated as ‘armpit of the central one’.
In fact, it means ‘hand of al-jauza’. Who (or what) was al-jauza? It was the name
given by the Arabs to the constellation figure that they saw in
this area, seemingly a female figure encompassing the stars of
both Orion and Gemini. The word al-jauza apparently comes from the Arabic jwz meaning
‘middle’, so the best translation that modern
commentators can offer is that al-jauza means something like ‘the female one of
the middle’. The reference to the ‘middle’
may be to do with the fact that the constellation lies astride
the celestial equator. As Ptolemy described it in the Almagest, Betelgeuse
represents the right shoulder of Orion. The Greeks did not give
a name to either Betelgeuse or Rigel, surprisingly for such
prominent stars, which is why we know them by their Arabic
titles. Betelgeuse is a red supergiant star hundreds of times
the diameter of the Sun. It expands and contracts over periods
of months and years, changing brightness noticeably in the
process.
The left shoulder of Orion is marked by
Gamma Orionis, known as Bellatrix, a Latin name meaning
‘the female warrior’. The star at the
hunter’s right knee, Kappa Orionis, is called Saiph. This
name comes from the Arabic for ‘sword’, and is
clearly misplaced. The three stars of the belt – Zeta,
Epsilon and Delta Orionis – are called Alnitak, Alnilam
and Mintaka. The names Alnitak and Mintaka both come from the
Arabic word meaning ‘the belt’ or
‘girdle’. Alnilam comes from the Arabic meaning
‘the string of pearls’, another reference to the
belt of Orion.
Below the belt lies a hazy patch marking
the giant’s sword or hunting knife. This is the location
of the Orion Nebula, one of the most-photographed objects in
the sky, a mass of gas from which a cluster of stars is being
born. The gas of the Nebula shines by the light of the hottest
stars that have already formed within; it is visible to the
naked eye on clear nights.
Chinese astronomers knew Orion as Shen, a great hunter
or warrior, one of the rare cases in which a constellation was
visualized almost exactly the same way in China as in Europe. Shen was at the
centre of a great celestial hunting scene, for the full Moon is
in this part of the sky during the hunting season, November and
December.
As was usual in the Chinese sky, the area
we known as Orion was broken into several smaller
constellations. The main body of Shen consisted of 10 stars: the four that make up the
traditional outline of Orion (Alpha, Gamma, Beta and Kappa),
the three stars of the belt and three stars in the sword. The
sword stars had a dual identity, for they also formed a
sub-constellation, Fa. In keeping with Shen’s identity as a warrior chief, the 10
stars were also imagined as his various army generals.
The triangle of stars that form
Orion’s head (Lambda, Phi-1 and Phi-2) was known as Zui, the beak of a
turtle or a bird – possibly a falcon used for hunting. Zui was also the name
of the 20th lunar mansion, but it was the narrowest of all 28
mansions (barely 2° wide) because it was so close to the
21st mansion, named Shen. The arc of stars that we see today as
Orion’s shield was interpreted in China as a banner, Shenqi, or sometimes a
longbow.
Being one of the oldest Chinese
constellations, Shen gathered many different and conflicting
identities down the ages. Early on, it was seen as the
forequarters of the White Tiger, one
of the four seasonal divisions of the Chinese sky. It was also
somehow associated with judicial investigations and
punishments.
Two stars in the north of Orion, Chi-1 and
Chi-2 Orionis, were joined with 1 Geminorum and 139 Tauri to
form Siguai, another constellation with two distinct identities.
In one interpretation it represented a group of observers
watching for omens in the sky (Tiangao
in Taurus was their lookout post),
but it was also visualized as a master of hounds and hence a
character in the hunting scene.
© Ian Ridpath. All rights reserved
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