Okay, when was the first time you remember finding Orion in the sky?

Oh, that's a great question.

Thank you, I wrote it.

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

As a kid, one of the first constellations I learned about is Orion. One of the most recognizable constellations in the sky.

And soon after the sunsets, if you live in the northern hemisphere, you can find

Orion near the eastern horizon on winter nights.

In Greek mythology, Orion is a legendary hunter.

One myth says he was banished to the sky for boasting about how many animals he could kill,

and that he and his hunting dogs eternally chased Tourists the bull and the Plei sisters.

Another says that the goddess Artemis was tricked into killing Orion

with her arrow, setting his image in the stars. When we peer into the sky now, we can

see the over a dozen stars that form his constellation. The easiest to see are the three that

line up to make his belt.

You know, I had seen it before, but I didn't know what I was looking at and I started studying the Star Beetle juice as a freshman and so my my gaze was drawn upwards to that red star in Orion. That's Serafina El Badri Nance, an astrophysicist and an expert in

beetle juice another star in Orion. It's the upper left shoulder of Orion. It is a red super giant so it literally looks red to the naked eye

which makes it really easily found when you're looking for the star.

And it's particularly interesting because it is very close and it is nearing the end of its life when it will explode as a

supernova. If you're looking up at Beetlejuice coming to the end of its life

you might wonder how did it get? What stages of life does a star go through before

it dies?

The life cycle of a star is primarily determined by the mass of the star. So low mass stars have very different fates

...