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Mythology
According to one story in Greek mythology Orion was a skilled hunter who met a premature death when he stepped on a scorpion, which stung him and killed him. Another tale tells of how Orion boasted he had the ability to kill all of Earth's wild creatures, so the gods sent the giant scorpion to battle and defeat him. Out of pity for Orion, the gods placed him in the sky as one of the constellations. Orion has two of his hunting dogs, represented by the constellations Canis Major and Canis Minor, at his side as well as a hare to hunt in the form of Lepus, which lies beneath his feet. Orion is holding a shield and a club as he faces the onslaught of another constellation in Taurus the Bull.
Description
The easiest-to-recognize portion of Orion looks like a huge rectangle. It is in the south-southeast in the winter and contains bright stars at each corner of the rectangle, with the ones in the upper left corner and lower right the brightest in the constellation. A line of three stars in the middle of this shape, at Orion's "waist", forms his belt and points downwards from right to left. The rectangle and belt remind some of a giant hourglass. Extending down from the belt is a threesome of fainter stars that represent a dagger, with the middle "star" actually the famous M42 nebula.
Betelgeuse
Betelgeuse is the bright star in the shoulder of Orion, a star so huge that if it replaced the Earth's Sun it would extend all the way out to where Mars is. Betelgeuse is 425 light years from earth, meaning the light that reaches an individual's eyes began to travel 425 years ago. An unstable red giant that varies in magnitude over a six-year period, it is sometimes brighter than Rigel, which is in Orion's foot. Betelgeuse is over 50,000 times as bright as the Sun and rated as the 10th brightest star visible from Earth.
Rigel
Rigel, the seventh brightest star in the sky, is nearly 800 light years away. It is a blue supergiant with a much fainter partner orbiting it. This star is a great distance away from Rigel, as far away as 60 times the distance between the Sun and Pluto in our own solar system. The partner star is visible with a low-power telescope despite the presence of Rigel's own luminosity. Rigel's brilliance is the equivalent of 85,000 of our Suns. Astronomers estimate Rigel to be "just" 10 million years old.
M42
The Great Orion Nebula, also called Messier object 42, is one of the sky's most observed wonders. In binoculars and small telescopes, it appears as a fuzzy patch, but large telescopes show it as a collection of glowing stellar gases. This nebula is 20,000 times bigger is size than our entire solar system. This region of space contains young stars and those in the earliest stages of formation.