There are a further six stars brighter than magnitude 3.0, including three making the short straight line of the Orion's Belt asterism.

Orion is bordered by Taurus to the northwest, Eridanus to the southwest, Lepus to the south, Monoceros to the east, and Gemini to the northeast.

[4][5] In countries close to the equator (e.g., Kenya, Indonesia, Colombia, Ecuador), Orion appears overhead in December around midnight and in the February evening sky.

Sirius and Procyon, which may be located from Orion by following imaginary lines (see map), also are points in both the Winter Triangle and the Circle.

[6] Orion's seven brightest stars form a distinctive hourglass-shaped asterism, or pattern, in the night sky.

Four stars—Rigel, Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, and Saiph—form a large roughly rectangular shape, at the center of which lies the three stars of Orion's Belt—Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka.

Alnitak is around 800 light years away from earth and is 100,000 times more luminous than the Sun and shines with magnitude 1.8; much of its radiation is in the ultraviolet range, which the human eye cannot see.

[16] In the Northern Hemisphere, Orion's Belt is best visible in the night sky during the month of January around 9:00 pm, when it is approximately around the local meridian.

The apex is marked by Meissa (Lambda Orionis), a hot blue giant of spectral type O8 III and apparent magnitude 3.54, which lies some 1100 light years distant.

Observations by the Chandra X-ray Observatory show both the extreme temperatures of the main stars—up to 60,000 kelvins—and the star forming regions still extant in the surrounding nebula.

With an overall magnitude of 8.0, it is significantly dimmer than the Great Orion Nebula that lies to its south; however, it is at approximately the same distance, at 1600 light-years from Earth.

[26] In Greek mythology, Orion was a gigantic, supernaturally strong hunter,[27] born to Euryale, a Gorgon, and Poseidon (Neptune), god of the sea.

[29] Orion's sixth brightest star, Saiph, is named from the Arabic, saif al-jabbar, meaning "sword of the giant".

Rudra, the Rigvedic form of Shiva, is the presiding deity of Ardra nakshatra (Betelgeuse) of Hindu astrology.

[33] The Jain Symbol carved in Udayagiri and Khandagiri Caves, India in 1st century BCE[34] has striking resemblance with Orion.

Bugis sailors identified the three stars in Orion's Belt as tanra tellué, meaning "sign of three".

In recently rediscovered myths, he is called Nimrod (Hungarian: Nimród), the greatest hunter, father of the twins Hunor and Magor.

In Siberia, the Chukchi people see Orion as a hunter; an arrow he has shot is represented by Aldebaran (Alpha Tauri), with the same figure as other Western depictions.

[39] There are claims in popular media that the Adorant from the Geißenklösterle cave, an ivory carving estimated to be 35,000 to 40,000 years old, is the first known depiction of the constellation.

Scholars dismiss such interpretations, saying that perceived details such as a belt and sword derive from preexisting features in the grain structure of the ivory.

[citation needed] To the Lakota Native Americans, Tayamnicankhu (Orion's Belt) is the spine of a bison.

Another Lakota myth mentions that the bottom half of Orion, the Constellation of the Hand, represented the arm of a chief that was ripped off by the Thunder People as a punishment from the gods for his selfishness.

His daughter offered to marry the person who can retrieve his arm from the sky, so the young warrior Fallen Star (whose father was a star and whose mother was human) returned his arm and married his daughter, symbolizing harmony between the gods and humanity with the help of the younger generation.

[46] The seven primary stars of Orion make up the Polynesian constellation Heiheionakeiki which represents a child's string figure similar to a cat's cradle.

[47] Several precolonial Filipinos referred to the belt region in particular as "balatik" (ballista) as it resembles a trap of the same name which fires arrows by itself and is usually used for catching pigs from the bush.

"[52] In Māori tradition, the star Rigel (known as Puanga or Puaka) is closely connected with the celebration of Matariki.

[53] In Javanese culture, the constellation is often called Lintang Waluku or Bintang Bajak, referring to the shape of a paddy field plow.

[54] The imagery of the belt and sword has found its way into popular western culture, for example in the form of the shoulder insignia of the 27th Infantry Division of the United States Army during both World Wars, probably owing to a pun on the name of the division's first commander, Major General John F.

From the Southern Hemisphere, Orion is oriented south-upward, and the belt and sword are sometimes called the saucepan or pot in Australia and New Zealand.

However, Orion's brightest stars all lie at a large distance from the Earth on an astronomical scale—much farther away than Sirius, for example.