Orion's Belt - 2-Panel-Mosaic

Orion’s Belt is one of the most familiar asterisms in the night sky, along with the Big Dipper and the Southern Cross. It is formed by three massive, bright stars located in our galaxy, in the direction of the constellation Orion, the Hunter: Alnilam, Alnitak and Mintaka. Two of the three stars are supergiants.
The three stars of the Orion’s Belt are pretty evenly spaced and form a more or less straight line, which makes them easy to locate. Because the belt stars are so prominent in the northern sky, they are associated with a number of stories and myths. The stars are known as the Three Kings, Three Marys, Frigg’s Distaff, Three Sisters, the Weighing Beam, and by many other names in different mythologies, from the Babylonians to Egyptians and Greeks.

The Greeks associated the stars with the mythical hunter Orion, with the constellations Canis Major and Canis Minor representing the hunter’s dogs and the constellation Scorpius, representing the scorpion that stung Orion, placed on the opposite end of the sky so that the two are never above the horizon at the same time.

In ancient Egypt, the stars of the Orion’s Belt were the symbol of Osiris, but the extent of their importance has only been speculated about. The belt stars are not perfectly aligned, and their alignment matches that of the three pyramids of Giza, while Orion’s orientation to the Milky Way matches the pyramids’ orientation to the river Nile. This has given rise to speculation that the three great pyramids were not just tombs, but also served as the pharaohs’ gateway to heaven.