Orion's Belt
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Although most popularly known as the "Belt of Orion," this Belt is also known by other names. In the Book of Job it is referred to as the "Bands of Orion"; in the mythology of Greece and Rome, as the arrow with which Diana killed the hunter when he was wading in the sea, and in the mythology of Northern races, as Frigga's jeweled Spinning Wheel with which the Goddess wove the long threads of fleecy clouds. Miss Proctor says that the Eskimos believe that the stars may be three seal hunters who have lost their way, and call them the "Lost Ones," although they also think that the Belt resembles three steps cut in a snowbank. The native Australians unite the Belt stars in a picture with the Pleiad group above Orion's shoulder and, according to Allen, imagine them as three young men "dancing a corroboree" while the Pleiades are the maidens playing for them. In England the Belt is called the "Ell and Yard," the "Yard Wand" and the "Golden Yard," because its stars are equidistant like a measuring rod; it is also called "Jacob's Staff" and sometimes the stars are called the "Three Kings," although the Germans call them the "Three Mowers." Far south on the hot deserts, the Arabs see the Belt stars as a "String of Pearls" and the Arabian astronomers, giving each pearl a name, called the first Mintaka, the second Alnilam and the third Alnitak. Other countries have called the stars "The Spangles" and "The Golden Grains," while Tennyson speaks of them as being "burnished by the frosty dark," which is the poet's way of saying that the stars of the Giant's Belt are exceptionally beautiful.
Modern astronomers turning their telescopes upon the stars of
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