Summer is a great time to spot a hidden gem tucked away in the Sun’s glare, or out of sight behind a horizon not quite low enough. The farther north you are the more difficult it is to spot, so you might have to try more than once to find it. You will need a low horizon to see as far south as possible. In fact, you might have to climb up on top of something like your house or a mountain. Be careful!
So what are you going to see from up there? A scorpion, and it is the biggest one you have ever seen. How did it get up there in the sky? I will have to tell you a little bit of Greek mythology to explain that.
It all started with Orion, the great hunter. He had the audacity to boast that he could kill every animal on Earth. That was a mistake. You see, the gods had a low tolerance for boastful humans.
Orion was quite a formidable character and only half human. His father was Poseidon, God of the sea. He inherited the ability to walk on water from him, but Orion did not know who he was up against. Gaia, the primordial personification of the Earth, got involved in the affair. She was an ancient goddess, older than the Olympian Gods, the Titans, and everybody else. She may not have had a lot of fighting skills, but she did have wisdom.
She conjured up the giant scorpion, much bigger than Orion himself and ordered it to attack. It had an exoskeleton so tough that Orion’s weapons could not pierce the monster. And so Orion met his match, and lost the battle and his life.
After the battle
The story has a happy ending, sort of. Zeus, the king of the gods, took pity on Orion and placed him and the scorpion on opposite sides of the sky. When the scorpion is rising, Orion is setting. The two never have to come face to face with each other again. That is why we never see the two of them together in the sky.
To look for the scorpion, you first have to scope out a spot with a low, clear horizon to the south. There may be just a short time when he is visible, or you may not see the entire scorpion at once.
Look for the bright ruby red star Antares, the heart of the creature. It is one of the brightest stars in the sky, and would be easy to spot if it were not so low. It is a super red giant star like Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion. It too is gigantic, millions of times larger than our Sun. It will explode as a super nova explosion some day in the not-too-distant future.
Moving up the scorpion to the right, you will find his head, and two dimmer stars marking what used to be the claws of the scorpion. Many years ago, when astrology was first invented, another constellation was needed to complete the Zodiac with a nice even 12, one constellation for each month. So they, I am not sure who exactly they were, stole the claws and called them Libra the Scales. That is why we have 12 constellations of the Zodiac, not 11.
If you are wondering about the significance of those constellations, here is a quick explanation. In our solar system all the planets orbit the sun in the same plane. Project that plane out into the universe and it falls on the 12 constellations of the Zodiac, all in a big circle around us up in the sky. As seen from Earth, all the planets move through those 12 constellations.
This story has a happy ending also. The two stars, now part of Libra, got to keep their scorpion names, and what names they are! Zubenelgenubi, which means the southern claw of the scorpion, and Zubeneschamali, the northern claw. These are definitely my favorite star names, and I was deeply honored when a friend named her dog after the southern claw.
Follow the curve of the scorpion to the left down to the stinger marked by the star Shaula. And there you have it. The most anatomically correct constellation in the sky.
Look for Jupiter and Venus low in the west after sunset but before it gets completely dark. The two are pulling away from each other after a close encounter in early June. In August be sure to watch the Old Faithful of meteor showers, the Perseids. They should put on a good show.
