Orion, star by star
The winter hunter is the easiest constellation to find. Learn it once and the rest of the sky falls into place.
An 8-minute read for the northern hemisphere.
Start with the belt. Three stars of nearly equal brightness sit in a short, straight line, and nothing else in the winter sky looks quite like it.
Follow the belt up and to the left and you reach Betelgeuse, a red supergiant at the hunter’s shoulder. Follow it down and to the right and you reach Rigel, blue-white and usually the brighter of the two.
Below the belt hangs the sword. On a dark night its middle star looks fuzzy. That smudge is the Orion Nebula, a cloud of gas where new stars are forming.

