Lepus

The constellation of Lepus, "The Hare", is a sprawling smattering of stars directly to the south of Orion, and presumably is one of the hunters "kills". From the appearance of the constellation, Orion must have run it over with a steamroller, as it is a motley tangle of stars that bear no resemblance to a rabbit at all! Lepus is another constellation that was recognized by Ptolemy, the Babylonians also saw it as the figure of a hare and so did the Egyptians, who considered the hare to be an incarnation of one of their gods and in their earliest astronomical tales was associated with the boat of Osiris.

Notable Objects

Messier 79 a globular cluster, one of the few winter clusters of this type