Orion star chart (IAU and Sky & Telescope magazine, Roger Sinnott & Rick Fienberg).

One of the 88 IAU constellations.

Orion-Group of constellations on the Kugel Globe, drawing and animated GIF by SMH 2025.

Etymology and History

The Greek constellation ...

Origin of Constellation

Babylonian

Greco-Roman

Aratus

[322] Aslant from the cut-off figure of the Bull lies Orion himself. Anyone whose glance misses him when he is positioned high up on a clear night may be sure he can never sight anything better to identify when he gazes up at the sky. (Kidd 1997)

Eratosthenes

Hipparchus

Hyginus, Astronomica

Hesiod calls him the son of Neptune by Euryale, daughter of Minos. He had the ability of running over the waves as if on land, just as it is said that Iphiclus could run over standing grain and not bruise it.

Aristomachus says that there lived a certain Hyrieus at Thebes — Pindar puts him on the island of Chios — who asked from Jove and Mercury when they visited him that he might have a child. To gain his request more readily he sacrificed an ox and put it before them for a feast. When he had done this, Jove and Mercury asked him to remove the hide from the ox; then they urinated in it, and bade him bury the hide in the ground. From this, later on, a child was born whom Hyrieus called Urion from the happening, though on account of his charm and affability he came to be called Orion.

He is said to have come from Thebes to Chios, and when his passions were excited by wine, he attacked Merope, the daughter of Oinopion. For this he was blinded by Oinopion and cast out of the island. But he came to Lemnos and Vulcan, and received from him a guide named Cedalion. Carrying him on his shoulders, he came to Sol, and when Sol healed him returned to Chios to take vengeance on Oinopion. The citizens however, guarded Oinopion underground. Despairing of finding Oinopion, Orion came to Crete, and there began to hunt with Diana. He made the boast to her we have mentioned before, and thus came to the stars. Some say that Orion lived with Oinopion in too close intimacy, and wanting to prove to him his zeal in hunting, boasted to Diana, too, what we spoke of above, and so was killed. Others, along with Callimachus, say that when he wished to offer violence to Diana, he was transfixed by her arrows and fashioned for the stars because of their similar zeal in hunting.

Istros, however, says that Diana loved Orion and came near marrying him. Apollo took this hard, and when scolding her brought no results, on seeing the head of Orion who was swimming a long way off, he wagered her that she couldn't hit with her arrows the black object in the sea. Since she wished to be called an expert in that skill, she shot an arrow and pierced the head of Orion. The waves brought his slain body to the shore, and Diana, grieving greatly that she had struck him, and mourning his death with many tears, put him among the constellations. But what Diana did after his death, we shall tell in the stories about her. (Mary Ward 1960)

Geminos

Almagest Ὡρίων

Transfer and Transformation of the Constellation

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  Orion with two dogs on the Kugel Globe (drawing by SMH 2021)

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  Orion on the Mainz Globe with one dog (drawing by SMH 2021)

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  Orion on the Farnese Globe (drawing by SMH 2017)

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  Orion drawn in an early as-Sufi manuscript (1170). Kitāb Ṣuwar al-kawākib al-thābitah (Bodleian Library MS. Huntington 212, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford) Place of Origin: Mosul

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  Orion on the Mercator Globe (1551)

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  Orion in Hevelius (1690)

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  Orion in Flamsteed/Fortin (1776)

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  Orion in Bode (1782,1805)

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  Orion in Bode's Uranographia (1801)

Mythology

Weblinks

References

• References (general)
• References (Babylonian)
• References (ancient Greco-Roman)
• References (medieval)