Profile / Characteristics
| English translation | Latin declination and pronunciations | Size/ °² | # stars (visible) |
| the Hunter | Orion – oh-RYE-un, uh-RYE-un Orionis – or-eye-OH-niss | 594 | 205 |
Main Star (brightest one):
| Designation | HIP number | name in IAU-CSN | brightness |
| bet Ori | HIP 24436 | Rigel | 0.13 mag (V) |
Our (modern) Explanation
Orion, The Hunter in Greek mythology, has been a male figure also in Egypt and Babylon, the latter depicting him as “True Shepherd of Heaven”, a pre-zodiac “path of the moon”-constellation. In Babylonian terminology, the planets are called “sheep”, so the “shepherd of heaven” guards the planets. The modern (1920s) definition of the boundary places the it a half degree below the ecliptic, so that the Sun never stands in Orion – but the Moon and the planets do.
Ancient Globes
Farnese Globe
Kugel Globe
Mainz Globe
Ancient Lore & Meaning
Aratus
Reference:
English translation by Douglas Kidd (1997).
Aratus: Phaenomena, Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries, Series Number 34
Pseudo-Eratosthenes
References:
French translation by:
Jordi Pàmias i Massana and Arnaud Zucker (2013). Ératosthènes de Cyrène – Catastérismes, Les Belles Lettres, Paris
English version in:
Robin Hard (2015): Eratosthenes and Hyginus Constellation Myths with Aratus’s Phaenomena, Oxford World’s Classics
Early Modern Interpretation
Contemporary
As one of their first tasks in the 1920s, the newly founded International Astronomical Union (IAU) established constellation standards. The Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte was assigned to the task to define borders of constellations parallel to lines of declination and right ascension. They were accepted by the General Assembly in 1928. The standardized names and abbreviations had already been accepted in 1922 and 1925.
