A brilliant constellation straddling the celestial equator, widely considered to be the most magnificent and interesting in the sky. Its pattern is interpreted as the hunter brandishing a raised club and a shield. Three bright stars mark his belt, and several fainter ones a sword hanging from it. Orion contains five stars of the first magnitude or brighter and a further ten brighter than fourth magnitude. The most spectacular diffuse nebula in the sky, the Orion Nebula, is faintly visible to the unaided eye in the ╘sword'.
