"How to use Orion the Hunter to find his two hunting dogs, a bull named Taurus and a bunny rabbit."

In February between 8 and 10 p.m. look due south where you will see the only three bright stars evenly spaced and lined up in a row, they make up the fabled belt of Orion the hunter. And directly above them you will see two bright stars, which mark Orion's shoulders and below the belt two bright stars which mark his knees. Now if we shoot an arrow in either direction through Orion's belt we can find several wonderful cosmic objects.

For instance if we shoot an arrow up to Orion's right our arrow will land almost smack dab on a reddish orange star named Aldebaran, which is the fierce red eye of Taurus the bull. But if you have really dark skies and extend that arrow a little bit further you will see a tiny dim cluster of stars riding on Taurus' shoulder, the cluster of stars called the Seven Sisters, The Pleiades. And one legend has it that they're riding on the shoulder of Taurus to escape Orion who is in hot pursuit of them across the heavens. But Taurus is making sure that Orion will never get past his fierce burning eye to the fair maidens and has been doing so for thousands of years.

So we can use Orion's belt to find not only Aldebaran but also the lovely and delicate and much dimmer Seven Sisters. Next shoot an arrow through Orion's belt in the opposite direction and it will land smack dab on the brightest star we can see in the night sky. Its name is Sirius and it marks the eye of one of Orion's two dogs, Canis Major which in Latin means the big dog. And if you use your imagination and draw lines between some of these stars you can come up with a pretty good stick figure of a pooch. But Orion also has a smaller canine companion named Canis Minor and to find it is a bit trickier. Take Bellatrix, one of the shoulder stars of Orion, and draw a line between it and the other shoulder star, Betelgeuse, then extend that line to the east and while it won't run smack dab into Canis Minor it will come very close to the bright star Procyon which marks his eye. It too is very bright although not as bright as Sirius.

So we have now used the belt of Orion to find Orion's big dog and his two shoulder stars to find Orion's little dog. But one of my favorite constellations near Orion is a rabbit, which Orion's two dogs have probably been hunting for the past few thousand years. His name is Lepus the hare. And he's directly underneath Orion's feet perhaps hiding in a cosmic bush Orion is standing in: smart Lepus, not so smart Orion. So there you have it, Orion and Taurus and Orion's two dogs plus a clever widdel bunny wabbitt. Keep looking up!