Notable Features
See also: List of stars in OrionOrion's seven brightest stars form a distinctive hourglass-shaped asterism, or pattern, in the night sky. Four stars—Rigel, Betelgeuse, Bellatrix and Saiph—form a large roughly rectangular shape, in the centre of which lie the three stars of Orion's Belt—Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka. Descending from the 'belt' is a smaller line of three stars (the middle of which is in fact not a star but the Orion Nebula), known as the hunter's 'sword'.
Many of the stars are luminous hot blue supergiants, with the stars of the belt and sword forming the Orion OB1 Association. Standing out by its red hue, Betelgeuse may nevertheless be a runaway member of the same group.
Read more about this topic: Orion (constellation)
Famous quotes containing the words notable and/or features:
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“The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit made permanent. Nature, like the destruction of Pompeii, like the metamorphosis of a nymph into a tree, has arrested us in an accustomed movement.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)