Howdy Star Gazers and welcome to this episode
of Star Trails. My name is Drew and I'll be your
guide to the night sky for the week of January
the 11th through the 17th. This week we're going
to focus on a single constellation, Orion, and
explore how to use it as a signpost to the night
sky. We'll look at its lore, its relationship
to ancient civilizations, its deep sky objects,
stars, and its secrets. We'll also travel back
thousands of years to Egypt where an intriguing
theory involving Orion and the pyramids has captivated
archaeologists and astronomers for ages. Later
in the show, we'll take a look at this week's
sky and go over some recent space news, the discovery
of an unusual object astronomers are calling
Cloud 9. Whether you're tuning in from the backyard
or the balcony, I'm glad you're here, so grab
a comfortable spot under the night sky and let's
get started. I know it sounds like a tagline
or something tuning in from the backyard or the
balcony, but both of these locations are fine
places to conduct astronomy from. Here at home,
I keep a pair of binoculars at the ready right
beside my balcony door so I can slip out and
do a little stargazing. I have a view to the
south, so it's great to catch the moon making
its way across the sky and some prominent constellations.
Of course, the backyard is better, as it opens
up the rest of the sky. But whichever of these
locations I choose, there's one constellation
that stands above all else in the sky, and that's
Orion, the mighty hunter. It's likely one of
the first groups of stars that fills observers
with wonder, and he's been doing that for millennia.
Orion is one of the oldest figures humanity ever
traced into the stars. In Greek myth he was a
giant hunter, strong, confident, sometimes noble,
sometimes reckless, depending on who's telling
the story. In some versions Orion boasts no beast
alive can defeat him, earning him the wrath of
the gods. In others, he's a tragic figure, killed
by a scorpion sent by Gaia or Artemis, then placed
in the sky as both a warning and a memorial.
Orion was a mirror, a way for ancient people
to project ideas about strength, pride, punishment,
and fate onto something vast and dependable.
In the night sky, the constellation depicts Orion
mid -stride, frozen in an eternal hunt. One arm
is raised, often imagined holding a club or a
bow, while the other carries a shield. His belt,
those three unmistakable stars, cuts cleanly
across his waist, anchoring the entire figure.
His shoulders and feet blaze with uneven intensity,
giving the figure a sense of motion and imbalance,
as if he's caught in the act rather than posing
for display. Orion doesn't rest in the sky, he
advances across it, rising in the east, dominating
winter evenings and eventually slipping away
into daylight, forever chasing, forever just
out of reach. As a kid, I remember gazing at
the three bright belt stars from the backseat
of the car on rides home at night. Those three
stars in a nearly perfect line, all bright, seemed
almost overbearing for the rest of the night
sky. Why were they so prominent? And what did
they mean? What were they trying to say, if anything?
It wasn't long before I read a little night sky
guide and learned that these were the three belt
stars of Orion, or Orion, as my child's mind
thought it was pronounced. It didn't take long
to realize Orion was a special constellation.
This wasn't just a random grouping of stars,
and unlike most of the constellations, it actually
resembles what it's representing. If you kind
of imagine it as a stick figure in the sky. Digging
deeper, I learned Orion was home to some of the
most beautiful deep sky objects in the cosmos.
Even today, when I look up at the winter sky,
I first check on Orion. So today, in keeping
with our January plan aimed at new stargazers,
we're going to take a closer look at this iconic
constellation. Orion isn't just our destination,
he's our guide. He shows up clearly early in
the evening at a time of the year when many people
are just beginning to look up again. You don't
have to hunt for him, he finds you. And that
alone makes Orion special. But Orion also does
something else. Once you learn his shape, he
teaches you how to move through the sky, how
stars point to other stars, how patterns lead
outward, how the night sky stops being just a
scattering of lights and starts becoming an organized
place. So let's turn our gaze upward and look
for Orion's belt, that line of three bright stars,
almost evenly spaced. Once you see it, you'll
never unsee it. Follow the belt downward, away
from Orion's shoulders, and your eye will land
on Sirius. Sirius is the brightest star in the
entire night sky, and it often flickers wildly
near the horizon, flashing colors as Earth's
atmosphere bends its light. Many people mistake
it for a planet. In reality, it's simply close
and luminous. And congratulations, that's a successful
star hop. You didn't need a chart, and you didn't
need an app. Now follow the belt in the opposite
direction, upward, and you're led toward Aldebaran,
a warm orange star marking the eye of Taurus
the Bull. Keep going up and you'll arrive at
the Pleiades, a small misty clump of stars that
people often mistake for the Little Dipper, because
it does sort of resemble that shape. While you're
there, look at the Pleiades with your binoculars.
It basically explodes with stars. So following
the same line gave us two completely different
destinations, and we can keep going. Beetlejuice
marks Orion's shoulder and glows with a deep
reddish hue. Rigel, at the opposite foot, burns
icy blue -white. If you look at Orion's upper
body, his shoulders and raised arm, and extend
that line upward, you're naturally led toward
the constellation Gemini. There, you'll find
the twin stars Castor and Pollux, sitting side
by side like a pair of beacons. Once you know
where to look for them, Gemini becomes one of
the easiest winter constellations to recognize,
and it feels almost as if Orion is gesturing
in their direction. Orion can also help you complete
one of the most useful shapes in the winter sky,
the Winter Triangle. You already know one corner
of it. Sirius. Another corner is Betelgeuse.
Draw an imaginary line between those two and
the third point of the triangle appears almost
automatically. Procyon in the constellation Canis
Minor. Look downward instead toward Rigel and
you'll find something quieter. Just below is
the constellation Lepus, the hare, placed quite
literally at the hunter's feet. Lepus is fainter
and easier to miss, especially from light polluted
skies, but Orion tells you exactly where to look
for it. And if you follow Rigel's line away from
Orion, the sky opens into something much larger,
Eridanus, the river. It winds away in a long
meandering path across the sky, far larger than
most people realize. Star hopping away from Orion
like this turns the constellation into basically
a roadmap for the sky. Suddenly, large swaths
of the sky feel navigable, and you're well on
your way to becoming a seasoned naked eye observer.
Now, let's turn our attention back to those three
belt stars. They are Alnitak, Alnilum, and Mentaka.
Despite their neat alignment, they are separated
by vast distances in space, with Al Neelum being
the most distant. That alignment is just a happy
accident, and reminds us that the sky isn't a
flat plane, but these stars are at varying distances
from us. Hanging from the belt is Orion's sword,
and this is where the constellation quietly changes
character. At the sword's center lies the Orion
Nebula, a vast stellar nursery visible even without
optical aid under dark skies. Nearby is the Running
Man Nebula, a faint reflection nebula shaped
by young energetic stars whose light is still
carving paths through the surrounding dust. Deep
inside the Orion Nebula is a group of stars that
appear to have been violently ejected from a
once stable system thousands of years ago. Studies
suggest a gravitational interaction or stellar
collision flung these stars outward at high speed,
leaving behind shock waves still visible today.
Orion isn't just birthing stars, it's occasionally
throwing babies out of its nursery. Along the
eastern belt star, Alnitak, sits the Flame Nebula,
glowing with hydrogen excited by nearby stars.
And just beside it, etched in silhouette rather
than light, is the Horsehead Nebula, a dark knot
of dust standing starkly against a luminous background.
Speaking of Alnitak, it's not a single star at
all, but a multiple star system, with at least
three components. The primary star is a massive
blue supergiant whose intense ultra -violent
radiation sculpts the Flame Nebula and the background
glow that allows the Horsehead Nebula to appear
in silhouette. Without Alnitak's violence, some
of Orion's most iconic sights wouldn't exist.
While the Orion Nebula is visible to the naked
eye, you're going to need a good scope to see
the Horsehead and Flame Nebula. These are rich
targets for astrophotographers and they come
alive in brilliant oranges, reds, and magentas
when captured with long exposures. Betelgeuse,
at the shoulder, glows a deep orange -red and
is one of the largest stars visible to the naked
eye. It's a red supergiant nearing the end of
its life, swollen, unstable, and variable in
brightness. Beetlejuice, and by the way, you
can safely say it three times, holds one of Orion's
intriguing secrets. Beetlejuice has long been
suspected of having a companion, and recent observations
suggest that this may actually be true. In 2022
through 2024, high -resolution imaging and modeling
pointed toward a close, faint companion. likely
a small star orbiting within a few astronomical
units of Betelgeuse. This companion may help
explain Betelgeuse's strange behavior, including
its dramatic dimming in 2019 and 2020, which
was initially noted as a possible pre -Supernova
event. If confirmed, this would make Betelgeuse
not just a dying star, but a binary system in
its final act. So, as it turns out, one of the
sky's most famous lonely giants may never have
been alone at all. Across from it is Rigel, a
blue -white star that outshines beetle Jews in
sheer luminosity, despite appearing similarly
bright from Earth. Sweeping across much of the
left side of the constellation is Barnard's Loop,
an enormous arc of glowing gas. likely energized
by ancient supernova explosions and massive stellar
winds. You aren't able to see it unless you photograph
this large swath of the sky. Longer exposures
bring it to light. Conceptually, it's an important
structure, giving us a window into a turbulent
ongoing process of stellar creation and destruction.
Orion is considered one of the Milky Way's great
workshops, where stars are born, age, and tear
their surroundings apart. Orion and its components
form an active unified region known as the Orion
Molecular Cloud Complex. As legendary as the
hunter is, nothing lasts forever. Orion, as we
know him, is living on borrowed time. The stars
that define his shape are moving and over tens
of thousands of years the familiar figure will
stretch, skew, and dissolve. Beetlejuice will
explode someday. Rigel will evolve. The belt
will lose its alignment. We're going to take
a quick break, but when we return more on Orion
and his relationship to humanity, we're going
to journey to the iconic pyramids of the Giza
Plateau in Egypt, where we'll explore an intriguing
concept called the Orion Correlation Theory.
We'll also check out this week's sky and some
recent astronomy news. Stay with us. Welcome
back! In addition to stargazing, an area that
I find endlessly fascinating is archaeology,
more specifically Egyptology. And even though
I grew up reading books like Eric von Daniken's
Chariots of the Gods, I don't think Egyptians
built the pyramids with the help of aliens. They
were, however, tuned in to the sky, and maybe
Orion had a larger impact on their culture than
we think. The Orion correlation theory proposes
that the three main pyramids on the Giza Plateau
were intentionally arranged to mirror the three
stars of Orion's belt as they appeared in the
ancient sky. It's a relatively new theory dating
back to just 1989. The core claims usually go
something like this. The relative positions of
the pyramids resemble the slight offset of the
belt stars. One pyramid is not perfectly aligned
with the other two, just as one belt star, Mentaka,
sits slightly off the straight line formed by
Al Natak and Al Neelam. Some argue that this
similarity is too precise to be coincidence.
The theory goes further, suggesting that the
ancient Egyptians intentionally encoded a sky
-earth correspondence, reflecting the heavens
on the landscape. In this view, the Nile becomes
a terrestrial analogue of the Milky Way, and
Giza becomes celestial geometry. Also, the Sphinx
monument reportedly represents the constellation
Leo, the lion. Some have theorized the layout
of elements inside the pyramids, which were tombs,
point directly to specific portions of the sky,
kind of like the markers at Stonehenge line up
with the solstices. The most well -known example
is in the Great Pyramid, whose south -axis shaft
allegedly points to Orion's belt. After more
than 4 ,000 years, Earth's shifting axial precession
has knocked off the alignment, if there ever
really was one. At its most ambitious, this theory
claims these alignments reflect Orion's position
around 10 ,000 BCE, implying either extraordinary
astronomical foresight or the inheritance of
knowledge from a far earlier civilization. And
here's where the theory gains much of its traction.
In ancient Egyptian cosmology, Orion was associated
with Osiris, the god of death, rebirth, and the
afterlife. Orion wasn't just another constellation,
he was a symbol of cosmic order and eternal return.
Pharaohs were believed to ascend to the stars
after death, joining the gods among the fixed
lights of the sky. So the argument goes, if you
were going to encode immortality, cosmic order,
and divine kingship into stone, why wouldn't
you choose Orion? And yet, the theory has problems.
First, the apparent alignment depends heavily
on selective framing. Rotate the star pattern
slightly, adjust scale or choose which points
to emphasize, and the match does look compelling.
But when measured rigorously, The positional
correspondence is approximate, not exact. But
the real kicker is this, there is no direct archaeological
evidence that the pyramid builders even intended
such a correlation. No inscriptions, no diagrams,
no textual references. The Egyptians left us
an extraordinary written record, and nowhere
do they say, we built this to mirror Orion's
belt. One of the more poetic extensions of the
theory is the idea that the Nile represents the
Milky Way, placing Giza as a kind of terrestrial
cosmos. This notion feels mythically correct,
but here again the evidence is circumstantial,
although seeing the Milky Way as a river of light
is a common occurrence in other cultures. Humans
are extraordinary pattern recognition machines.
We evolved to find structure and chaos because
doing so kept us alive. That instinct doesn't
turn off when we look up, it intensifies. In
Orion, ancient people saw continuity, return,
and order in a dangerous world. When modern people
see Orion mirrored in the pyramids, they feel
a thrill that says this mattered then and maybe
it still does now. That emotional response is
real, even if the alignment wasn't intentional.
Orion keeps appearing in theories like this because
he's visually unavoidable. He's bright, he's
geometric, he feels designed. That makes him
a magnet for myth, speculation, and cosmic storytelling.
now just as much as thousands of years ago. In
that sense, the Orion -Giza correlation is now
another fascinating element of Orion's mythology,
even if it isn't part of Egyptian engineering.
Let's move on from the mysteries of ancient Egypt
and into the certainty of this week's night sky.
The moon is in a waning crescent phase through
this period. By week's end it's a very slim sliver,
only about 1 -2 % illuminated, making it easy
to observe without washing out fainter stars
and deep sky targets. The new moon will occur
on the 18th, yielding the darkest skies of the
month. The two naked -eye planets dominating
the sky right now are Jupiter and Saturn. Jupiter
is still the standout. It reached opposition
last week, meaning Earth is directly between
it and the Sun. It rises at sunset and stays
visible all night long, shining exceptionally
bright in the constellation Gemini. Saturn is
also visible low in the early evening sky in
Pisces. It's dimmer than Jupiter but still noticeable
with the naked eye, especially earlier in the
night before it dips toward the western horizon.
Other naked eye planets, Venus, Mars, and Mercury,
are effectively out of view during this period
because they're near solar conjunction and lost
in the sun's glare, so they don't appear in the
evening or pre -dawn sky. The beehive cluster,
Messier 44, becomes increasingly well -placed
later in the month after sunset. Since the moon
is thin and dim this week, it's a good time to
appreciate rich star fields and open clusters,
like the double cluster in Perseus or the Pleiades
later in the evening. Before we go, I wanted
to mention a cool bit of space news that made
the rounds a few days ago. Scientists using the
Hubble Space Telescope have announced the discovery
of a curious new kind of object that's being
called Cloud 9. Not because it's happy, but because
it's unusual. This object, located about 14 to
16 million light years from Earth near the spiral
galaxy Messier 94, appears to be a cloud of gas
dominated by dark matter, but containing no stars
at all. Researchers are referring to it as a
failed galaxy. Under most circumstances, when
enough gas and dark matter collect together,
gravity pulls the gas inward until it cools and
forms stars. But Cloud 9 lacks any detectable
stars. Even deep observations with Hubble's powerful
imaging fail to reveal a stellar population within
the cloud's bounds. ruling out even faint low
-mass stars to very stringent limits. Instead,
it's rich in neutral hydrogen gas and appears
to sit in a massive halo of dark matter, something
on the order of billions of times the mass of
the Sun. Astronomers think cloud 9 may represent
a long predicted but so far unseen class of objects
known as Reionization Limited HI Clouds, or relics.
In cosmological theory, many dark matter halos
should exist that never managed to form stars,
either because they were too small or because
the conditions in the early universe prevented
collapse and star formation. Cloud 9 may be the
first clear observation of such an object, a
relic of the early universe that never lit up
with stars. The discovery is exciting because
it gives astronomers a rare new window into how
galaxies begin and how some never do. And it
may help scientists better understand the role
of dark matter in shaping the cosmos. That's
going to do it for this week. If you found this
episode interesting, please share it with a friend
who might enjoy it. The easiest way to do that
is by sending folks to our website, StarTrails
.Show. And if you want to support the show, use
the link on the site to buy me a coffee. It really
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Sky and YouTube. Links are in the show notes.
Until we meet again beneath the stars, clear
skies everyone.