How to identify Orion

Astronomy and astrology has always fascinated me and as it all comes down to the position of stars and planets i was automatically inclined towards stargazing.Now even before recognizing  stars one must be able to identify the different constellations.One of the easiest set of constellations to recognize are the winter constellations.As the name suggests these constellations are seen during  the winter in the Northern hemisphere.These include Orion,Canis major,Canis minor,Leo,Leo minor,Sextans,Monoceros,Lynx,Hydra,Gemini and Cancer.Now before going to the difficult ones,lets start with the simple constellation like Orion  On a clear winter night look up in the sky and search for three bright stars that are close to each other and almost in a straight line this is the Orion belt they are (from left to right) Alnitak,Alnilam,Mintaka.On the upper left side of the Orion belt there should be a relatively bright star that has a reddish color this star is known as Betelgeuse.On the lower right corner of the Orion belt there should be a bright blue star known as Rigel.The interesting fact about these stars is that if you make an imaginary line  

joining Betelgeuse and Rigel then the direction pointed by Betelgeuse is North and that of Rigel is South.Now the star on the upper right corner of the Orion belt is known as Belatrix and the star on the lower left corner of the Orion belt is known as Salph. Now just by looking at Orion one can identify many other constellation in my next blog i'll teach you how to identify other constellation using Orion and all the interesting objects that one can find in Orion.

* Please leave your comments/suggestion so that i can improve my blog, you can also follow this blog in order to get E-mail notifications.