Welcome to the Hunting Orion Series. There are 14 caches total in this series. All hides are in typical locations, but retrieving them may prove to be a challenge for some at certain locations. A few locations may have hidden dangers like culverts under the snow in the wintertime. In the spring and summer, you may have to get your feet wet. Cache safely, and please, only retrieve the cache if you can safely put it back. You must sign the cache log before claiming the online find unless permission is received from BlackHoleSurfer, the CO. The containers are not reflective, but I recommend hunting these at night when the stars are bright, just remember to always cache with safety on your mind. Containers should be easily seen with a good flashlight. I was able to hide and retrieve these all with my feet firmly on the ground, and used the same TOTT on all of these. If you can figure out what TOTT I whipped up, these will be a breeze. Good Luck!
Hunting Orion: Kappa Orionis
Orion constellation is one of the brightest and best known constellations in the night sky. It lies on the celestial equator.
Orion has been known since ancient times. The constellation is also known as the Hunter, as it is associated with one in Greek mythology. It represents the mythical hunter Orion, who is often depicted in star maps as either facing the charge of Taurus, the bull, pursuing the Pleiades sisters, represented by the famous open cluster, or chasing after the hare (constellation Lepus) with his two hunting dogs, represented by the nearby constellations Canis Major and Canis Minor.
The constellation Orion contains two of the ten brightest stars in the sky – Rigel (Beta Orionis) and Betelgeuse (Alpha Orionis) – a number of famous nebulae – the Orion Nebula (Messier 42), De Mairan’s Nebula (Messier 43) and the Horsehead Nebula, among others – the well-known Trapezium Cluster, and one of the most prominent asterisms in the night sky – Orion’s Belt.
Kappa Orionis
Saiph (Kappa Orionis) is the 6th most luminous star in the constellation Orion with an apparent magnitude of +2.09, which also makes it the 54th brightest star in the entire night sky. Interestingly, while Saiph is significantly hotter than the constellation’s brightest star Rigel, it is smaller and also appears to be much less luminous because its high temperature causes it to radiate much of its light in ultraviolet wavelengths that are not visible to human eyes.
Saiph’s is a blue supergiant (B0.5 Ia) located 650 light years from Earth that shines with an apparent magnitude of +2.09. According to its spectrum, hydrogen fusion has ceased in its core, but its high luminosity and temperature, on the other hand, place it in a region of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram where stars are either in or close to the region where hydrogen-fusion stability exists. In practical terms, its position on the H-R diagram shows that the star is only starting to evolve into a giant, even though it is known that it has exhausted its hydrogen fuel.
Nonetheless, and despite the confusion regarding its evolutionary state, Saiph provides an excellent source of background illumination with which to examine the interstellar medium, or the “cocktail” of matter that fills the spaces between stars. Saiph also appears to be a single star, despite slight variations in its spectrum, and although it also seems to have a “normal” spectrum as derived from its chemical composition, it has only about 10% of the carbon abundance of the Sun.
In addition, Saiph is losing mass at a frenetic pace, with studies having revealed that its very energetic solar wind is blasting material into space at the rate of the about 1 solar mass every 1.1 million years. This finding suggests that at its present age of 11.1 million years, Saiph must once have been about 31.8 times more massive than the Sun. At about this time in its extreme youth, Saiph also reached its point of closest approach to the Sun, when it came within about 56 light years of the Sun during one of its orbits around the galactic core that takes it to within between 24,000 and 26,000 light years of the core.
Quick Facts
Name: Saiph
Object: Star -- Blue Super Giant
Distance: 650 light years
Brightness: 18,000 times greater than the Sun
Surface Temp: 50,000 F
Color: White-blue
Mass: 25 x the mass of the Sun
As an added bonus, I have hidden a TB Code somewhere on one of the Hunting Orion pages you can discover. You must first log the cache it was on before discovering the tag, please.
