Orion

American  

[uh-rahy-uhn] / əˈraɪ ən /

noun

• Orionis
  genitive

1. Classical Mythology. a giant hunter who pursued the Pleiades, was eventually slain by Artemis, and was then placed in the sky as a constellation.

2. Astronomy. the Hunter, a constellation lying on the celestial equator between Canis Major and Taurus, containing the bright stars Betelgeuse and Rigel.

3. Military. a land-based U.S. Navy patrol plane with four turboprop engines, used to detect, track, and destroy enemy submarines and armed with missiles, torpedoes, mines, and depth bombs.

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Orion ¹ British  

/ əˈraɪən /

noun

1. a conspicuous constellation near Canis Major containing two first magnitude stars (Betelgeuse and Rigel) and a distant bright emission nebula (the Orion Nebula ) associated with a system of giant molecular clouds and star formation

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Orion ² British  

/ əˈraɪən /

noun

1. Greek myth a Boeotian giant famed as a great hunter, who figures in several tales

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Orion Scientific  

/ ō-rī′ən /

1. A constellation in the equatorial region of the celestial sphere, near Taurus and Gemini. Orion (the Hunter) contains the bright stars Betelgeuse and Rigel.

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Orion Orionis

Orion will separate from Blue Moon and perform another docking maneuver, this time with Starship.

From Science Daily ● Nov. 9, 2026

Nasa's Orion spacecraft and its crew will undock from the Blue Moon lander and then dock with the SpaceX Ship.

From BBC ● Oct. 27, 2026

Then Nasa's Space Launch System rocket will launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying four Artemis III astronauts in the Orion capsule.

From BBC ● Oct. 27, 2026

IceCube has been fully operational since 2011 and has detected high-energy neutrinos from a distant galaxy in the direction of the constellation Orion, as well as from our own Milky Way.

From Barron's ● Oct. 6, 2026

Long after midnight, Danny, Glory, Llewelyn, and Orion sat around the grove.

From "The Way to Rio Luna" by Zoraida Cordova

The brightest of these four, Theta1 Orionis C, is hundreds of thousands of times more energetic than the sun.

From Scientific American ● Oct. 20, 2023

The system, GW Orionis, is located 1,200 light-years away in the constellation of Orion and comprises three stars and the “deformed, broken-apart disc” that surrounds them, according to the researchers.

From Fox News ● Sep. 23, 2020

The star, also called Alpha Orionis, has variable brightness, meaning that its brightness rises and falls regularly.

From Salon ● Dec. 24, 2019

In the constellation of Orion, for example, Betelgeuse is the brightest star, so it got the first letter in the Greek alphabet—alpha—and is known as Alpha Orionis.

From Textbooks ● Oct. 13, 2016

A three-inch telescope resolves θ Orionis into the famous trapezium, and a nine-inch instrument sees two stars more.

From Recreations in Astronomy With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work by Henry White Warren

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