Histories of the Sky

I often find myself looking up at the night sky in hopes to find a clear unobstructed view of everything that's going on up there. I find it so fascinating that the constellations, planets, and even galaxies that we find ourselves awe stricken by every night were once gazed upon by people who lived anywhere on this earth even centuries ago, and that the shapes within constellations originally observed and outlined by ancient peoples are still visible tonight. The most prominent constellation I find my attention drawn to night after night without struggle is the great Orion, thanks to his signature belt that is visible from every part of the earth due to its location on the celestial equator; once you find the three close sequential stars that make up Orion's belt, the form of his body is easily identified soon after. Another notable feature of this constellation is the red giant Betelguese, which is one of the largest stars in the sky. So indulging my curiosity, I decided to find out Orion's tale, what people thousands of years ago felt the importance of this prominent figure of the sky was.

The origin of Orion from Greek and Roman mythology:

Orion was a demi-god, son of a mortal woman and the god Poseidon; Artemis fell in love with him, desiring to be with him. Her brother Apollo knew that if she gave her love to Orion, she would lose her power and image as a great goddess, and Apollo determined to keep his sister from her love. So when Artemis was busy, Apollo sent a giant scorpion to attack Orion, intending to kill him. Orion fought the scorpion bravely, but wasn't able to win the fight, so he attempted to flee. Seeing that he couldn't win, Orion attempted to flee by running into and on top of, the ocean; as Orion turned to enter the water the scorpion struck his ankle and the poison from the strike killed Orion. Artemis was of course upset upon learning what happened, so she put Orion's body into the skies so that she could always remember him. Afterwards, however, Apollo also put the scorpion into the skies as well, calling it Scorpio, so that the creature could forever chase the demi-god across the heavens. So, in the Greek sky, whenever Scorpio started to rise during the change of seasons, you could see Orion going down on the other horizon.

The ancient Egyptians recognized this constellation as well, but saw something different: they viewed it as their god Osiris holding the star Aldebaran. A theory exists (the Orion Correlation Theory) that speculates correlation between the locations of the three largest pyramids of Giza and the three bright stars that make up Orion's belt.