Although most popularly known as the "Belt of Orion," this Belt is also known by other names. In the Book of Job it is referred to as the "Bands of Orion"; in the mythology of Greece and Rome, as the arrow with which Diana killed the hunter when he was wading in the sea, and in the mythology of Northern races, as Frigga's jeweled Spinning Wheel with which the Goddess wove the long threads of fleecy clouds. Miss Proctor says that the Eskimos believe that the stars may be three seal hunters who have lost their way, and call them the "Lost Ones," although they also think that the Belt resembles three steps cut in a snowbank. The native Australians unite the Belt stars in a picture with the Pleiad group above Orion's shoulder and, according to Allen, imagine them as three young men "dancing a corroboree" while the Pleiades are the maidens playing for them. In England the Belt is called the "Ell and Yard," the "Yard Wand" and the "Golden Yard," because its stars are equidistant like a measuring rod; it is also called "Jacob's Staff" and sometimes the stars are called the "Three Kings," although the Germans call them the "Three Mowers." Far south on the hot deserts, the Arabs see the Belt stars as a "String of Pearls" and the Arabian astronomers, giving each pearl a name, called the first Mintaka, the second Alnilam and the third Alnitak. Other countries have called the stars "The Spangles" and "The Golden Grains," while Tennyson speaks of them as being "burnished by the frosty dark," which is the poet's way of saying that the stars of the Giant's Belt are exceptionally beautiful.
Modern astronomers turning their telescopes upon the stars of this Belt note that there is more to be seen here than meets the unaided eye, for suspended from either side, like an added attempt at decoration, hang tiny stars of different sizes, daintily colored. Mintaka (δ), the double star on the west, is a white and pale violet, of the 2nd and the 7th magnitudes. Alnitak (ζ) on the lower end to the southeast, is a topaz-yellow, light purple and gray, of the 2nd, 6th and 10th magnitudes. The faint star just below Alnitak is composed of an exquisite group of delicate stars of various colors.
If the north pole of our earth was shot out like a dart, it would hit the dome of our sky somewhere in the vicinity of the North Star. Likewise, if the earth's equator could be conceived of as swelling and swelling and swelling, it would hit Orion just about at the top star of his belt. The circular line where this imaginary terrestrial hoop would fit against the heavens is called the celestial equator and it, of course, is in a position equally distant between the two heavenly poles. A good way to remember just where the celestial equator passes is noticing the pathway which the star mentioned above traces in its journey from east to west. A teacher of astronomy would now add that not only is the terrestrial equator marked as the celestial equator in the sky, but every meridian of the 'swollen' earth is traced up there as an hour circle, all of the hour circles being fastened in a great framework to both poles, as they are on earth. But instead of latitude the astronomer says declination, and in place of longitude he says right ascension, just as in place of meridian, he says hour circle. He then can designate the places of the stars in the sky in exactly the manner in which he designates the position of a sea or a city on the earth and as large telescopes are provided with equatorial mountings, so that their axes conform with that of our earth, objects in the sky can be located by the use of graduated circles and verniers, thus greatly facilitating astronomical research.
THE GREAT NEBULA OF ORION
One of the most impressive spectacles in the sky lies on the center of the Sword of Orion. This Sword is adorned with three stars, the central one appearing misty, "like an eye in tears." A large telescope discloses that this is not a star after all but beautiful cloudy masses of nebulæ, which cover the whole central part of the constellation. A photograph uncovers a still further surprise (for the eye of a camera is more sensitive to light than the eye at a telescope), and one sees then that the nebula spreads in all directions, over and beyond most of the stars on the Hunter's figure.
"It is a wonderful sight," says Peck in "The Constellations," "the whole field of view is filled with an irregular mass of green shining mist, which is apparently broken up into flocculent masses, delicate clouds of light, sprays and wisps, and standing out from the cloudy background, like a sprinkling of diamond dust, are seen faint, glittering stars."