Orion's Sword

Beyond Europe this grouping is quite widely referenced as a weapon just as the majority of cultures perceived Orion's standout asymmetrical "hourglass" of seven very bright stars as a human.

[1] This makes the nebula potentially the closest HII region to Earth, a mass of hydrogen that has been ionized by nearby, hot, young stars.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, O'dell et al. focused on identifying previously unseen features of the nebula, such as high-ionization shocks, compact sources, and protoplanetary disks.

[13] In the myths of the Nama of Namibia and the western Cape, this was the arrow of the husband of the Pleiades, daughters of the sky god, who was represented by Orion's SW main star Rigel.

[14] The Tswana to the east traditionally call the unusually bright nebula and its companions dintsa le Dikolobe, three dogs which chase the three pigs (the belt).

It is also mentioned in Jethro Tull's song "Orion", on their 1979 album Stormwatch, in the lines "Your faithful dog shines brighter than its lord and master, your jewelled sword twinkles as the world rolls by."