h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The western star in Orion's 'belt' is named Mintaka and is one of the closest bright stars to the Celestial Equator.
The constellation is also visible in the Southern Hemisphere in the northern sky.
The Orion Nebula is not a 'galaxy' but a nebula (as the name implies). A nebula is part of a galaxy, in this case the Orion Nebula is part of the Milky Way. Also, the Orion Nebula is classified as object M42 in Charles Messier's catalogue of deep sky objects.

A couple more points...

It's really unfortunate this article went live in summer, because Orion is only visible in autumn/winter (and spring for early risers).
At the moment, the sun is in Cancer, heading for Leo (the constellations are slightly out of time with astrological tradition these days), which is very close to Orion in the sky - so it's up in daylight, and hence invisible.

Orion is certainly visible from both hemispheres as it straddles the celestial equator - the difference is, if you see it from (say) Australia, it's upside down, so the belt is angled the opposite way - which feels very odd if you were raised in the North - and of course Rigel appears as the shoulder and Betelgeuse the foot.

Both Betelgeuse and Rigel are spectacular stars with extremely high intrinsic brightness, whereas most very bright stars are so because they're relatively near. Both are well over 1000 light years away, yet appear nearly as bright as Sirius, only about 8 LY distant. Because brightness drops as the square of distance, that means Rigel gives out 10,000 times as much light as Sirius (which is no slouch as stars go), and Betelgeuse about half that.

The Orion Nebula is by far the most spectacular sight in the sky, ideal for small telescopes. It is a cloud of gas lit from inside by young stars actually being born there, most famously the "trapezium" of four stars very close together. A particularly beautiful image of it can be seen at http://www.arval.org.ve/DJOriTrpz.htm - through a 4-inch telescope it is plain green, but seeing it with your own eyes makes it, if anything, even more beautiful.

A quick correction to what I said earlier: the belt of course still runs on the same diagonal (bottom left - top right), because it's a rotation not a reflection operation.
It still looks wrong, though.
And his sword points upwards.

The sword points up because you all are upside down!

Not now, but I was then!
You know the weirdest thing? The way the sun (and everything else, I guess, but it's the sun you notice) moves from right to left across the sky. If you're the sort of person who unconsciously keeps track of where you are and what time of day it is by such referents, it's very disconcerting!

I have the same problem in the Northern hemisphere. It's so weird to see the sun moving clockwise...

Simple pointer ... whichever hemisphere you are in, the sun rotates across the sky in the same direction as the water flushes down the toilet.

Thank you for a wonderful Guide entry!
I enjoyed reading it, as an amateur astronomer.
How I love star-gazing.
Congratulations on your Approved Entry rating.
Keep writing!

It's even better if you get a starry night to fly from Johannesburg to London at the right time of year - you can see Orion come down from his handstand/semi-cartwheel - well the beginning and end of it : 'upside-down' in the east at the start of the flight and the 'right way up' in the west at the end : fairly firsthand evidence of the Earth's curvature, although not indisputable with a suitably contrived argument.