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Comment by retro64 | Hacker News Reader

Orion is one of my favorite constellations. Where I grew up, the winter sky was often clear and I spent many hours as a youth gazing up, wondering about it all.

Even now, when I saw a pic of Orion after following links from the article, I again couldn’t help but think about how awesome the universe is, and how whatever is going on out there just dwarfs our petty, shitty little Earthy problems.

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It's definitely one of the most identifiable constellations and has several bright stars in the sky: Betelgeuse, Rigel (one of the brightest from Earth) and Bellatrix. The Orion nebula is resolvable with binoculars and easily captured in a DSLR (although it'll be blurry if you don't have tracking).

A newer favorite of mine is Scorpius (visible now at my latitude ~fivein the morning when I walk my dogs); mostly because of Antares, one of the visibly reddest stars in the sky. (And for similar reason, I'm a fan of Aldebaran/Taurus.)

If you ever get the chance to look up at the night sky with night-vision goggles, you should take another look. Its a whole new kind of stunning when you can clearly see Barnard's loop as well.

Also if you can find a dark enough sky to see the Milky Way with your naked eyes, it can be quite amazing to directly perceive our physical location in the galaxy.

It has always been my guiding constellation along with Karlsvogna (Big Dipper), as it's very often visible in the night sky where I live. Karlsvogna is particularly useful for finding the North Star or Polaris as it's also called and Orion for the meditation over the visible red star on Orions left shoulder (Betelgeuse).

When I emerge myself into space I feel at peace and I can sit by a lake not too far from here for hours watching it and the rest of the stars :)

I really need to buy a telescope soon.

I named my son after Orion.

We've decided if Betelgeuse goes away we won't amputate to follow suit...

If we are the first sentient beings in the universe, they really are first world problems.

Orion is one of my favourite constellations too! I had a pretty similar childhood experience. I got photocopies of two star charts (for both hemispheres) off a book I found in my school library and began using the star chart for the northern hemisphere to study the night sky. The winter sky was the best. I was and I still am very fond of the winter sky. I never had to refer to the star chart to locate Orion. It was easily the most recognizable constellation in the winter sky.

Rigel and Betelgeuse, the two brightest stars in Orion are also easily recognizable. They are situated diagonally opposite to each other in the constellation. While Rigel shines bright white, Betelgeuse is distinctly reddish. When I later learnt about red giant stars, the reddish hue of Betelgeuse made even more sense. And then if we imagine a straight line that roughly passes through the three stars in Orion's belt and extend it eastwards, the imaginary line ends up in the vicinity of Sirius, the brightest star of the night sky.

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