274 



ELEMENTS OF GENERAL SCIENCE 



sky. In the legends of the ancients Orion was a giant and a 

 mighty hunter who in the sky stands facing Taurus, the 

 Bull, which is somewhat to the west of him. In Orion there 

 are three stars in a straight line running from the upper 



right to the lower 

 left. They consti- 

 tute the belt of 

 the warrior. Just 

 below them is a 

 line of three fainter 

 stars, which at this 

 time of the year 

 runs nearly up and 

 down. On a clear 

 night the central 

 one of these three 

 will be seen to be 

 a little fuzzy. In 

 fact, it is not only 

 a star, and a so- 

 called triple star, 

 but also a tre- 

 mendous mass of 

 glowing gas called 

 a " nebula." Its 

 diameter is several 



million times the 

 ,. .. . 



distance from the 



, , 



eartn tO tfte SUn 



anc j jg equal to the 

 , 



distance from the 

 earth to Sirius. The bright white star which is a little below, 

 and somewhat to the right of the belt of Orion, is Kigel, a 

 first-magnitude star, which in light-giving power is at least 

 10,000 times as great as our own sun. 



134. Orion 



In making this photograph the camera was arranged 



so as to omit most of the stars of the region, thus 



showing the imaginary warrior, Orion, more clearly. 



Photograph by the Yerkes Observatory 



