Orion's Belt or the Belt of Orion is an asterism in the constellation Orion. It consists of the three bright stars Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka.
Looking for Orion's Belt in the night sky is the easiest way to locate the constellation Orion in the sky. The stars are more or less evenly spaced in a straight line, and so can be visualized as the belt of the hunter's clothing. In the Northern hemisphere, they are best visible in the early night sky during the winter, in particular the month of January at around 9.00 pm.
Read more about Orion's Belt: References in History and Culture, Gallery
Famous quotes containing the words orion and/or belt:
““You know Orion always comes up sideways.
Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains,
And rising on his hands....””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“But the lightning which explodes and fashions planets, maker of planets and suns, is in him. On one side elemental order, sandstone and granite, rock-ledges, peat-bog, forest, sea and shore; and on the other part, thought, the spirit which composes and decomposes nature,—here they are, side by side, god and devil, mind and matter, king and conspirator, belt and spasm, riding peacefully together in the eye and brain of every man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)