I have good news and bad news about the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion. The good news is that it's truly one of the few constellations that resembles what it's supposed to be in our sky. The bad news is that around here, we have a tough time seeing the great celestial scorpion because it's a low rider in the southern sky. This time of summer after evening twilight, Scorpius is at its highest point in the southern sky, but that's not saying much because it's barely above the horizon. In fact, if you have any tree line at all above the southern horizon, you probably won't see the entire stinger. You may have to position yourself so that the southern horizon is as low as possible. Viewing from a hilltop usually takes care of that problem.
Look in a dark enough sky and you'll see Scorpius, from the three stars in a nearly vertical row on the right that make up his head to the big curve of bright to moderate stars on the left that outline his tail and stinger. Personally, I see Scorpius as "the giant fishhook" that trolls our low summer skies. I remember my grandma pointing out the big fishhook in the south sky off the dock of her cabin near Garrison, Minn.
The brightest star in Scorpius is the bright brick red star Antares at the heart of the beast. Antares has a definite reddish hue, demonstrating stars come in different colors; they are not just little white lights in the sky. A star's color tells a lot about its nature. Bluish-tinged white stars are the hottest; some have surface temperatures of more than 30,000 degrees F. Reddish stars like Antares are cooler. In fact, Antares is cooler than our own sun, with a surface temperature of close to 6,000 degrees F. A thermometer plopped on the sun's outer surface would show a temperature more than 10,000 F. Antares reddish hue is also reflected in its name.
Antares is derived from the Greek language and means "rival of Mars" since it has the same ruddy tone as the planet Mars. You can easily confuse Mars and Antares with each other if you're new to stargazing. This summer, you can easily see how the two celestial bodies can be mistaken for each other as Mars is not all that far away from Antares, shining very brightly in the low southwestern sky.
There's no confusion between Mars and Antares when it comes to size. Mars is only about 4000 miles across, a far celestial cry from the more than 600 million-mile diameter of Antares. That's more than 700 times the diameter of our sun. If we replaced the sun at the center of our solar system with Antares, the outer edge of our new sun would extend beyond the orbit of Mars. We would be living inside Antares, and global warming would really run amuck.
Supergiant
Antares is what's known as a red supergiant star near the end of its life. All stars fuse hydrogen to helium atoms in their cores but eventually run out of hydrogen and start fusing helium into carbon and oxygen. That causes the star to greatly swell out, turning the star color to red while the expanded stellar surface cools off. This will happen to our sun in about five billion years. However, our home star won't bloat out to as large of a red giant since it was born a much smaller star than the original Antares.
Take a small telescope or even a good pair of binoculars and take a closer look at Antares and its deep ruddy hue. It can turn into quite a light show because it often flashes and sports many other colors because of the scattering interference of the Earth's atmosphere that's thicker near the horizon where Antares spends its summer evenings.
By the way, while you're checking out Antares with your scope or binocular, see if you can spot within the same field a "fuzzy" star just to the right of Antares, about a half of one degree or one moon-length away. That little fuzzy star is better known as Messier Object 4. It's a globular cluster made up of hundreds of thousands of very old stars more than twelve billion years old, shining away at a distance of more than 7,000 light-years away, or about 42,000 trillion miles away.
Lots of lore
There are many stories in lore and mythology as to how Scorpius wound up as a constellation. The one I like is the Greek mythology story about how Zeus, the king of the Greek gods, dispatched a giant Scorpion to kill the mighty hunter Orion in an attempt to end an affair he was having with Zeus' daughter Diana, the goddess of the moon. Orion hunted by night and slept by day, and while he was on his nocturnal hunting adventures, he was noticed and admired by Diana as she dutifully led the moon across the sky. She would call down to the hunky hunter and they would have long distance conversations. They must have had giant megaphones. As time went on, Diana eventually joined Orion in his hunting jaunts, ignoring her lunar duties.
Zeus learned of his daughter's negligence and put a contract out on Orion. He had his staff send a giant scorpion to sting and kill Orion during his daytime slumber. When the fateful day arrived and the giant scorpion approached Orion, the ever-alert hunter awoke while the beast steered in his direction. Orion shot up from his slumber and valiantly fought the scorpion with all his might; but eventually, he was stung by the overgrown enhanced scorpion and died instantly.
That night, Diana discovered the body of her dead boyfriend and was filled with tremendous grief. She managed to compose herself and lift Orion's body to the sky and transform it into the famous constellation we see during the winter evenings. When she looked back down to Earth, she saw the giant scorpion fleeing from the scene. She put two and two together and sought revenge. She flung it up into the opposite end of the sky from Orion. That's why Orion and Scorpius are never seen at the same time. Orion prowls the winter skies and Scorpius trolls the summer heavens. Orion won't get stung again.
Celestial hugging
This coming week marks the 45th anniversary of Apollo 11, the first manned landing on the moon by Buzz Aldrin and the late Neil Armstong. On Thursday morning in the early morning twilight, the waning crescent moon will be just to the right of the bright planets Venus and Mercury in the low eastern sky. Venus is by far the brighter of the two planets.
(Lynch is an amateur astronomer and author of the book, "Stars, a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations." Contact him at mikewlynch@comcast.net.)