Skywatch: The great summer scorpion is on the prowl

Summer evening skies are the home of certain classic constellations One of them is Scorpius the Scorpion the th-brightest constellation in the night sky and one of those scant constellations that in fact looks like what it s supposed to be Personally I see Scorpius as a giant fishhook that trolls our low summer skies You certainly won t have to crane your neck to see it because it s a low rider Begin looking for Scorpius in the very low southern sky at the end of evening twilight Majority of Scorpius is easy to find The brightest star is Antares a brick-red star marking the heart of the beast It s the brightest star in that part of the sky To the right of Antares you ll see three dimmer stars in a nearly vertical row that make up the Scorpion s head To the lower left of Antares look for the long curved tail of the beast Unfortunately here in Minnesota and Western Wisconsin the lowest section of the tail never gets above our horizon At the end of the tail barely above our horizon is the celestial scorpion s stinger made of two moderately bright stars very close together Mike Lynch The stinger stars also known as the cat s eyes can be a bit of a challenge to see You have to have a low flat treeless southern horizon to see them Part of the difficulty of seeing the stinger stars is that visibility is greatly hampered close to the horizon because you re forced to look through a lot more of Earth s blurring atmosphere Moderate to heavy light impurity and high humidity in the air can also add to the challenge If you re ever in the southern U S Scorpius will be a lot higher above the horizon and you can get a much better look at it Antares Mike Lynch Getting back to Antares its reddish hue demonstrates that 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-white stars are the hottest with specific having surface temperatures exceeding degrees Fahrenheit Reddish stars like Antares are cooler In fact Antares is cooler than our own sun with a surface temperature of approximately degrees A thermometer plopped on the sun s photosphere would show close to degrees Antares reddish hue is also reflected in its name Antares is derived from the Greek language and means rival of Mars as it shares a similar reddish tone with the planet Mars You can easily confuse Mars and Antares with each other if you re new to stargazing There s no confusion between Mars and Antares when it comes to size Mars is only about miles across a far celestial cry from the over- -million-mile diameter of Antares That s over times the diameter of our sun If Antares were at the center of our solar system instead of our sun the planets Mercury Venus Earth and Mars would all be living inside Antares There are several stories about how Scorpius came to be a constellation The one I like is the Greek mythology story about how Zeus the king of the gods sent a giant Scorpion to kill the mighty hunter Orion to end an affair he was having with Zeus daughter Artemis the goddess of the hunt Orion hunted by night and slept by day and while he was on his nocturnal hunting adventures Orion was a hunk and caught the eye of Artemis After watching Orion for a insufficient weeks she started to call down to the very manly hunter and have long-distance conversations with him every night As time went on Artemis eventually joined Orion in his hunting jaunts ignoring her other 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 as the beast stirred the nearby brush with its approach Orion shot up and valiantly fought the scorpion with all his might but eventually he was stung by the steroid-enhanced scorpion and died instantly That night Artemus discovered the body of her 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 As she looked back down to Earth she saw the giant scorpion not far from where she had detected Orion She put two and two together and decided to get revenge She dive-bombed the scorpion picked it up and flung it up into the opposite end of the sky from her dead boyfriend where it transformed into a constellation That s why the constellations Orion and Scorpius are never seen in the sky at the same time Orion prowls the winter skies and Scorpius trolls the summer heavens Orion won t get stung again Celestial happening this week Mike Lynch On Sunday and Monday toward the end of evening twilight in the very low western sky look for the new crescent moon hanging close by the faint planet Mars Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and retired broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis St Paul He is the author of Stars a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and adventurepublications net Mike is available for private star parties You can contact him at mikewlynch comcast net Related Articles Skywatch The swan of summer is flying high Skywatch Lyra weaves quite a tale Skywatch Shooting the moon Skywatch Full-blown July summer skies Skywatch The Z stars tongue twisters of the night sky