Scorpius Crawls along the Southern Horizon in August

Constellations represent a wide variety of animals, tools, fictional characters and mythical monsters.  One of the most famous creatures is crawling along the southern horizon during the months of summer.  

The constellation Scorpius the Scorpion is easy to spot, being dominated by a number of bright stars; the brightest of which is the star Antares.  The word Antares means Rival of Mars, and it does indeed appear red-orange in color.  

Antares is a red supergiant star very near the end of its life cycle.  If antares were placed in our own solar system it would extend out to well beyond Mars.  

In addition to being easy to spot, Scorpius is chock full of interesting "deep sky" objects.  These include  nebulae, star clusters, and globular clusters.  

If  you happen to be observing under very dark skies you may see a faint band of light extending up and over to the northern horizon. This is the Milky Way, our home galaxy.  When we are looking toward the constellations Scorpius and Sagittarius (to the east of Scorpius) we are looking toward the center of our galaxy.

As August begins, go out after dark and look to the southern horizon for the giant scorpion; but hurry because as fall rolls around, Scorpius will crawl below the western horizon.

Image created by the author using Stellarium