Orion Constellation Trivia
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48 free Orion Constellation trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Orion constellation trivia quiz covers the most recognisable star pattern in the sky. The astronomy questions ask about the hourglass of seven bright stars, the red supergiant on one shoulder and the blue supergiant at the opposite foot, the names and meanings of Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka, the nebula hanging from the Belt, the Trapezium, the Horsehead and Flame nebulae, the Great Dimming of Betelgeuse, the Orionids that Halley's Comet leaves behind, and how the Belt points to Sirius and Aldebaran. The mythology and culture questions cover the giant hunter of Greek myth, his mother the Gorgon, the scorpion, the blinding on Chios and the cure at sunrise, the Egyptian god Sah and Osiris, the Babylonian True Shepherd of Anu, the Three Marys and Three Kings, the Lakota bison, the Chinese lunar mansion of three, the saucepan of the southern sky and the Bible verse that asks whether you can loosen Orion's belt. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on every question. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our Pleiades and constellations quizzes next.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many modern constellations does the IAU recognise, with Orion among them?
88
88. The International Astronomical Union settled the list at its first assembly, in Rome in 1922, after astronomers' additions had pushed some star atlases past a hundred constellations.
Q 02During which season is Orion most prominent in Northern Hemisphere evening skies?
Winter
Winter. South of the equator the same stars are a summer sight and the hunter stands on his head, and from May to July he is up only by day and so can't be seen from most of the world.
Q 03Which 2nd-century astronomer included Orion among his 48 constellations?
Ptolemy
Ptolemy. His star catalogue, written around AD 150, stayed the standard for more than 1,400 years, until Tycho Brahe measured the sky afresh at the end of the 16th century.
Q 04Which red supergiant marks Orion's right shoulder?
Betelgeuse
Betelgeuse. Say it aloud and you have 'Beetlejuice': the star's name gave Tim Burton's 1988 film its title and its ghost his name.
Q 05NASA's Orion capsule carried astronauts around the Moon in 2026 in a programme named after which goddess?
Artemis
Artemis. In one telling she loved the hunter Orion and shot him by mistake when her brother Apollo dared her to hit a speck far out at sea; grieving, she set him among the stars.
Q 06What are the stars of Orion's Belt called?
Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka
Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka. The row sits almost on the celestial equator, which is why the Belt can be seen from nearly everywhere on Earth at some time of year.
Q 07In which 1997 film is a tiny galaxy said to be 'on Orion's belt', meaning the collar of a cat?
Men in Black
Men in Black. A dying alien's clue sends the agents looking to the sky before they realise that Orion is his pet cat, with the galaxy hanging from its collar.
Q 08The westernmost star of Orion's Belt lies almost on the celestial equator, so where does it rise?
Due east
Due east. Anything on the celestial equator rises due east and sets due west, so this star, lying almost exactly on the line, makes a ready-made compass for finding both.
Q 09The dusty discs Hubble found around young stars in the Orion Nebula are the raw material for making what?
Planets
Planets. Hubble's first sharp views of the nebula showed discs of dust around at least half the young stars surveyed, a sign that planet-making is common across the galaxy.
Q 10In which 1982 film does a dying android recall 'attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion'?
Blade Runner
Blade Runner. Rutger Hauer cut the scripted speech down the night before filming and added its famous last line about tears in rain.
Q 11Which star forms Orion's head?
Meissa
Meissa. Much of its fierce output is ultraviolet light the eye can't see, so the star that marks Orion's head looks surprisingly faint.
Q 12Which river of Greek myth is the long constellation that winds away from Orion's left foot?
Eridanus
Eridanus. It is the river into which Phaethon plunged, struck down by Zeus after losing control of the Sun's chariot, and it meanders from the hunter's foot deep into the southern sky.
Q 13Scholars now trace the name of Orion's Alpha star, the hunter's shoulder, to which Arabic phrase?
The hand of al-Jawzā'
The hand of al-Jawzā'. Medieval scribes misread the Arabic 'y' of yad, hand, as a 'b', and later scholars explained the garbled word as 'armpit', a meaning still widely repeated.
Q 21Which telescope pioneer studied the stars around the Orion Nebula in 1610 and 1617 yet never noted the cloud itself?
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei. He even found the star at its heart to be a multiple, but the first to record the glowing cloud is thought to be the Frenchman Peiresc, late in 1610, and he never published it.
Q 22Which dark cloud near the eastern Belt star is named for its distinctive shape?
The Horsehead Nebula
The Horsehead Nebula. It gives off no glow of its own: the horse is a cloud of thick, cold dust seen in silhouette against the red light of hydrogen gas behind it.
Q 23Which astronomer, once her observatory director's housemaid, found a famous dark nebula in Orion in 1888?
Q 14If Alpha Orionis replaced the Sun, whose orbits would it engulf at the very least?
Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars
Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. At roughly 700 times the Sun's width its surface would lie out past the asteroid belt, and by some estimates beyond Jupiter's orbit too.
Q 15When Orion's red shoulder star faded in late 2019, what did many skywatchers suspect was coming?
A supernova
A supernova. Hubble data point instead to the star having blown out a cloud of hot gas that cooled into dust and hid part of its surface, though the exact cause is not settled.
Q 16In Greek myth, which sisters, now a star cluster, does Orion still chase across the night sky?
The Pleiades
The Pleiades. Zeus is said to have set the sisters among the stars to save them, yet the hunter still rises behind them every night; one ancient writer says it was their mother he was after.
Q 17Twice as hot as the Sun, the star at Orion's left foot shines which colour?
Blue-white
Blue-white. A star's colour follows its heat: the coolest glow red, the Sun at under 6,000 K looks yellowish, and this supergiant, at about 12,000 K, shines blue-white.
Q 18Which part of Orion holds a naked-eye 'star' that is really a glowing cloud of gas?
The Sword
The Sword. Its middle 'star' looks slightly fuzzy to the naked eye because it is the Orion Nebula, a mass of gas from which a swarm of new stars is being born.
Q 19In 1880 Orion's nebula became the first ever to be what?
Photographed
Photographed. Henry Draper needed an exposure of almost an hour, and in 1883 Andrew Common's photographs of the same nebula recorded stars too faint for any eye to see.
Q 20What is the young star cluster at the heart of the Orion Nebula called?
The Trapezium
The Trapezium. William Herschel named it for the four-sided figure its brightest stars make, and it is their fierce light that sets the whole surrounding nebula glowing.
Williamina Fleming
Williamina Fleming. Taken on from Edward Pickering's household to help at Harvard's observatory, she spotted the cloud on a photographic plate and went on to classify most of the 10,000 stars in its first great catalogue.
Q 24Which body is the parent of the Orionid meteor shower?
Halley's Comet
Halley's Comet. Earth crosses its trail of dust twice a year, so the same comet that gives us the Orionids each October also brings the Eta Aquariid meteors every May.
Q 25Which star do you find by extending the line of Orion's Belt to the southeast?
Sirius
Sirius. The brightest star in the night sky is the Dog Star, and the sultry 'dog days' of summer take their name from the season when it first rose at dawn just ahead of the Sun.
Q 26Which animal, a small constellation of its own, crouches beneath Orion's feet while his dogs give chase?
A hare
A hare. Lepus sits right under the hunter, and the Greek poet Aratus pictured the Great Dog chasing it across the sky for ever, rising and setting close behind.
Q 27Star maps show Orion raising his club and shield against which neighbouring constellation to his northwest?
Taurus
Taurus. Old star atlases draw the Bull charging the hunter, though the familiar myths of Orion describe no such fight; Hyginus notes only that some made a bull his prey.
Q 28Which star marks Orion's left shoulder?
Bellatrix
Bellatrix. Its Latin name means 'female warrior', and it lent that name to Bellatrix Lestrange, the Harry Potter villain, many of whose relatives are also named after stars.
Q 29In which ancient epic does the hero meet Orion's ghost, still herding wild beasts with a bronze club?
The Odyssey
The Odyssey. Odysseus sees the giant hunter among the dead, and earlier in the poem Orion is among the stars he watches as he steers his raft away from Calypso's island.
Q 30In Hesiod's account, which god fathered the giant hunter Orion with Euryale, a daughter of King Minos?
Poseidon
Poseidon. The sea god gave his son the power to walk on water; a rival tale from Boeotia has Orion born from an ox-hide that visiting gods buried in the earth.