Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Friday, January 14th.  The sun will rise at 8:16.  It’ll be up for 9 hours and 10 minutes, setting at 5:26.   The moon, 2 days past first quarter, will set at 4:20 tomorrow morning.

The constellation of Orion the hunter is visible in the southeast at 9 p.m. The stars of Orion are interesting in themselves. I’ve already talked about two of them. Starting at the top left of the seven bright stars of Orion’s torso is Betelgeuse the bright red star, whose name means something like “Armpit of the Giant”. The star in Orion’s other shoulder is Bellatrix the “Amazon Star”. Below are the three stars of Orion’s belt, from left to right; Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka. Their names mean “Girdle”, “Belt of Pearls”, and “Belt” respectively. Down to Orion’s knees we look on the left to the star Saiph which means “Sword”, though it is some ways from the stars of Orion’s sword. Finally there’s the bright blue-white star Rigel whose name means ”left Leg of the Giant”.

* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.

Orion with star names

Update:

I’ve added this  image created from the free planetarium program Stellarium showing the stars and their names.  Download it from www.stellarium.org.