<P> Looking for Orion's Belt in the night sky is the easiest way to locate Orion in the sky . The stars are more or less evenly spaced in a straight line, and so can be visualized as the belt of the hunter's clothing . They are best visible in the early night sky during the Northern Winter / Southern Summer, in particular the month of January at around 9: 00 pm . </P> <P> The names of the three stars come from Arabic; Alnilam (النظام) means "string of pearls" or is related to the word nilam ("sapphire"); with the spellings Alnihan and Alnitam, all three variants are evidently mistakes in transliteration or copy errors . Mintaka (منطقة) meanwhile has the same root as Alnitak (النطاق), and both mean "belt". </P> <P> Alnitak (ζ Orionis) is a triple star system at the eastern end of Orion's belt and is 1,260 light - years from the Earth . Alnitak B is a 4th - magnitude B - type star which orbits Alnitak A every 1,500 years . The primary (Alnitak A) is itself a close binary, comprising Alnitak Aa (a blue supergiant of spectral type O9. 7 Ibe and an apparent magnitude of 2.0) and Alnitak Ab (a blue dwarf of spectral type O9V and an apparent magnitude of about 4). Alnitak Aa is estimated as being up to 28 times as massive as the Sun, and to have a diameter 20 times greater . It is the brightest star of class O in the night sky . </P> <P> Alnilam (ε Orionis) is a supergiant, approximately 1,340 light - years away from Earth and magnitude 1.70 . It is the 29th - brightest star in the sky and the fourth - brightest in Orion . It is 375,000 times more luminous than the Sun . Its spectrum serves as one of the stable anchor points by which other stars are classified . </P>

Is orians belt part of the big dipper