Mintaka
star system in the constellation Orion
Mintaka , designation Delta Orionis (δ Orionis, abbreviated Delta Ori, δ Ori) and 34 Orionis (34 Ori), is a quintuple star system some 1,200 light-years away in the constellation of Orion. Together with Alnitak (Zeta Orionis) and Alnilam (Epsilon Orionis), the three stars form Orion's Belt, known by many names among ancient cultures. The star is located very close to the celestial equator. When Orion is near the meridian, Mintaka is the rightmost of the Belt's stars when viewed from the Northern Hemisphere facing south.
The five stars form a hierarchy:
Delta Ori A
Delta Ori Aa, an eclipsing binary with an orbital period of 5.7 days
Delta Ori Aa1
Delta Ori Aa2
Delta Ori Ab, which orbits Aa with an orbital period of 152 years
Delta Ori C, a binary star with an orbital period of 30 days, also known as HD 36485
Delta Ori Ca
Delta Ori Cb
All five stars are hot and luminous, more massive than the Sun.
Nomenclature
Delta Orionis is the star's Bayer designation, 34 Orionis its Flamsteed designation. The name Mintaka itself is derived from an Arabic term for 'belt': منطقة or manṭaqa. In 2016, the International Astronomical Union organized a Working Group on Star Names (WGSN) to catalog and standardize proper names for stars. The WGSN's first bulletin of July 2016 included a table of the first two batches of names approved by the WGSN, which included Mintaka for this star. It is now so entered in the IAU Catalog of Star Names.
“Mintaka” enters the record as star system in the constellation Orion. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mintaka, star and system can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Mintaka” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Mintaka, star and system provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q680341. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2016.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mintaka” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.