A proper hunter also carries dogs: Diagonally below Orion in eastern direction the Great Dog shines towards us with Sirius, the brightest fixed star in our firmament at all. It sparkles in all colors: White, yellow, red, blue and green. Sirius, which the ancient Egyptians associated with their goddess Isis, forms the apex on which the winter hexagon stands. From the Great Dog in a northeasterly direction we reach the fifth star of the Winter Hexagon, the brightly shining Prokyon in the Small Dog, a constellation consisting of only two stars. In a straight line above Prokyon we find the two main stars of the zodiac Gemini: Kastor and Pollux. They point to the two inseparable twin brothers, Castor and Polydeukes, who are bound together in great love, as told in Greek mythology. Polydeukes, whom the Romans called Pollux, stands as a star below Kastor and shines somewhat brighter. Thus it forms the sixth star of the winter hexagon.
The most impressive of the six constellations of the winter hexagon is surely that of Orion, with which many old legends and myths are connected. If the ancient Egyptians worshipped in him their great god Osiris, for the Greeks he was the bravest and strongest giant and hunter of the earth and at the same time the most beautiful. This led him to many a love adventure, one of which was his undoing: Once he hunted on the island of Chios, accompanied by Artemis, the virgin goddess of the hunt. When he became importunate, Artemis caused a scorpion to emerge from the earth, which stung Orion in the right heel. From this poison he had to die. Both were transferred to the night sky. There the scorpion can’t harm Orion anymore: if he rises in the east, the sky hunter disappears in the west under the horizon…
Once we have grasped the winter hexagon with its six majestic stars, it can become for us the image of a wonderful celestial crystal, which shines towards us high up from the starry night sky in the winter time.