What'sUP!--Orion- The Hunter
The Orion Constellation- The Hunter
One of the most beautiful of all the constellations is up in the night sky right now shortly after sunset. Look to the SE and UP to see the bright Constellation – Orion – The Hunter. This sky object contains many bright and interesting stellar and non-stellar objects within its boundaries. But first let’s discuss several object catalogues so you know what the STRANGE letters mean.
Messier objects- if you remember our previous discussion, these are sky objects catalogued by Charles Messier in the 1700 hundreds. M1, M2, M3, M4, and so forth are their usual catalogue designations.
New General Catalogue- NGC objects by J. Dreyer in 1888. This is an extensive list of about 7000 sky objects. NGC 104, NGC 188, NGC 752 and so forth are the usual catalogue designation.
Index Catalogue- IC I, and IC II, these are supplements to the NGC list ---- just more objects added during later years by J. Dreyer in 1895 and 1908.
I use a small field manual called, “Objects in the Heavens, by Peter Birren”, to help me find these objects in the night sky. The book is available on Amazon.com, and used copies are sometimes listed for sale at under $10.00. The field manual is arranged BY CONSTELLATION, and shows the name and location of these objects; along with their M, NGC, or IC designation. Some of the brighter objects within Orion according to “Objects in the Heavens” are:
M42- The Orion Nebula, a stellar nursery of young stars, very easy to see with binoculars.
NGC 1662- a scattered star cluster
NGC 1977- a bright nebula North of M43
NGC 1981- another bright star cluster
NGC 2169- a bright triangular shaped star cluster
IC 434- contains the famous Horse Head dark nebula—you need a camera or extremely dark skies to see it. Most all the pictures you see are long exposure, with special filters.
Additionally, Orion contains two of the brighter stars in the sky- Rigel a giant blue white star, and Betelgeuse (pronounced “Beetle Juice” -yes like the movie!), a SUPER giant red star over 700 times larger than our sun, and over 400 light years away! You can spend an entire evening just viewing the many stellar and non-stellar objects located within the Orion Constellation!
So get outside tonight and find the Orion Constellation after dark…………. And see WHAT’S UP!.............. inside the HUNTER.
TelescopeMan
