Scorpius—Latin for “scorpion”—is one of the most distinctive constellations in the night sky. Unlike many constellations whose supposed figures require considerable imagination, its bright stars really do trace something resembling a scorpion, complete with a reddish heart and a long tail that curves around to a stinger.
The constellation is also positioned against the Milky Way’s rich inner star fields, making it a rewarding part of the sky to explore with the naked eye, binoculars, or a small telescope. Its brightest star, Antares, is an enormous red supergiant, while the surrounding star fields contain clusters and nebulae.
Scorpius Is Best Seen in Summer
Scorpius is primarily a summer constellation for Northern Hemisphere observers, with June, July and August providing the best opportunities to see it in the evening sky. Look low in the southern sky for bright, reddish Antares, which marks the Scorpion’s heart. If you already recognize the Teapot of Sagittarius, look immediately to its west for Scorpius, whose long hooked tail curves toward Sagittarius.
Scorpius can be seen from latitudes between about +40° and −90°, but how much of the Scorpion you can see depends strongly on where you live. From the southern United States, the constellation climbs considerably higher, while from northern states it stays much closer to the southern horizon. Rather than rising high overhead, the Scorpion can seem to crawl along the bottom of the sky, with its long tail dipping particularly low. Farther north, including from Britain, seeing the complete tail becomes difficult and a clear southern horizon is especially important.
Once you’ve found Antares, let your eyes adjust and trace the stars downward into the long curving tail. The brighter stars are visible even with some light pollution, but under darker skies the full Scorpion becomes much easier to recognize.
Scorpius Actually Looks Like a Scorpion
Antares provides the ideal starting point for tracing Scorpius because it marks the heart of the Scorpion. Several bright stars above and around it form the front of the creature, while below Antares the constellation stretches downward before sweeping around in a long, distinctive hook.
Follow that curve and you eventually reach Shaula and Lesath, a conspicuous pair near the end of the tail that mark the Scorpion’s stinger. Antares, the curved body and tail, and this pointed end combine to make Scorpius one of the relatively few constellations whose traditional figure becomes quite convincing once you know what you’re looking for.
Antares, the Red Supergiant That Rivals Mars
Antares is easy to recognize by its orange-red color, which can make it look like the reddish planet Mars. Ancient observers noticed the resemblance and named the star accordingly: Antares means “rival of Ares” — Ares being the Greek counterpart of the Roman god Mars.
The comparison becomes even clearer when Mars itself appears nearby. Because Antares lies close to the ecliptic—the path followed by the planets across the sky—the planet can occasionally pass close to the star, allowing you to compare the two reddish objects directly. It’s a striking chance to see for yourself why Antares came to be regarded as the rival of Mars.
Physically, the two objects couldn’t be more different. Mars is a nearby planet shining by reflected sunlight, while Antares is an enormous red supergiant hundreds of light-years away whose relatively cool surface gives it its distinctive color. The star is in a late stage of its evolution and is so large that, if placed at the center of our Solar System, its outer layers would engulf the inner planets. Antares is also a binary system, with a much hotter blue-white companion that is extremely difficult to see beside the brilliant supergiant.
Principal Stars in Scorpius
Antares is the brightest star in Scorpius, but several other bright stars create the Scorpion’s distinctive outline. They range from hot blue-white stars to evolved giants and lie at very different distances from Earth.
- Antares (Alpha Scorpii) is the constellation’s brightest star at around magnitude 0.9 and lies roughly 550 light-years away. This orange-red supergiant marks the Scorpion’s heart.
- Shaula (Lambda Scorpii) shines at magnitude 1.6 from roughly 570 light-years away. This blue-white multiple-star system lies near the end of the tail beside Lesath (Upsilon Scorpii), with the pair marking the Scorpion’s stinger.
- Sargas (Theta Scorpii) is a yellow-white bright giant around 330 light-years away that shines at magnitude 1.9. It lies along the Scorpion’s curving tail and is closer to Earth than several of the constellation’s other principal stars.
- Dschubba (Delta Scorpii) is a blue-white multiple system roughly 490 light-years away that helps form the front of the Scorpion. Normally around second magnitude, it unexpectedly brightened beginning in 2000, becoming noticeably more prominent in the familiar constellation pattern.
- Acrab (Beta Scorpii) is another blue-white multiple-star system, around 400 light-years away, that helps form the Scorpion’s upper region.
There’s an interesting twist to this apparent pattern. Constellation stars often have no physical relationship to one another, but several conspicuous stars in Scorpius belong to the enormous Scorpius-Centaurus Association, a vast population of relatively young stars sharing a common origin and motion through space. Many of its brightest members are hot blue-white stars, but they aren’t all alike: even red supergiant Antares belongs to the association. Other stars in Scorpius lie at very different distances and simply happen to fall along the same line of sight. The constellation therefore combines stars that really are distant relatives with others that only appear to belong together.
Scorpius Dwells in the Milky Way’s Rich Star Fields
Scorpius lies against an exceptionally rich part of the Milky Way, toward the inner regions of our Galaxy. Under dark skies, the Milky Way runs behind the Scorpion in dense star fields filled with clusters and nebulae, making this an especially rewarding part of the sky to explore with binoculars.
One of the easiest deep-sky objects to locate is Messier 4 (M4), a globular cluster just over a degree from Antares. It lies about 7,200 light-years from Earth, making it one of the nearest globular clusters to us. M4 appears as a faint fuzzy patch in binoculars, while larger telescopes begin resolving its crowded stars. It also has an interesting place in observing history: it was the first globular cluster Charles Messier was able to resolve into individual stars.
Follow Scorpius down toward its stinger and you’ll reach two much looser open clusters, M6 and M7. M7, known as Ptolemy’s Cluster, is one of the brightest open clusters in the sky and can be seen with the naked eye as a large, loose gathering of stars under dark conditions. Ptolemy recorded it nearly 2,000 years ago, long before the invention of the telescope. It is also the southernmost object in the Messier catalog. Nearby M6 is the Butterfly Cluster, named because its brighter stars resemble a butterfly with spread wings. Both become much richer through binoculars.
Another cluster visible to the naked eye under good conditions is NGC 6231, often called the Northern Jewel Box. Together with surrounding stars, it forms the head of the False Comet, an apparent comet-shaped feature whose stars trail away like a tail. Binoculars reveal NGC 6231 itself as a rich gathering of young stars.
Scorpius contains still more. M80 is another globular cluster, located roughly between Antares and Acrab, while its nebulae include the enormous Cat’s Paw Nebula and nearby War and Peace Nebula (NGC 6357), both active regions of star formation. The latter owes its unusual name to infrared images in which one part was interpreted as resembling a dove and another a human skull. Other photographic targets include the Butterfly Nebula and further clusters and nebulae scattered across this crowded Milky Way landscape. For more targets, see our guide to deep-sky objects in Scorpius.
Scorpius Helps You Navigate the Zodiac
Scorpius is a useful landmark for understanding how the zodiac constellations fit together across the real sky. Rather than thinking of the zodiac as twelve unrelated names, you can follow its constellations as a chain along the ecliptic—the path followed by the Sun across the celestial sphere and close to which the Moon and planets also appear. Around Scorpius, the sequence runs:
Virgo → Libra → Scorpius → Sagittarius
Once you’ve learned conspicuous Scorpius, the much less obvious Libra lies immediately beside it, with Virgo beyond. In the opposite direction lies Sagittarius and its distinctive Teapot. Learning these neighboring constellations gradually turns the zodiac from a list of names into a connected map you can actually follow across the sky.
Scorpius and Libra also share an ancient connection. Stars now belonging to Libra were once associated with the claws of the Scorpion, an ancient connection that survives in the Arabic-derived names of Libra’s brightest stars. Zubenelgenubi means the Southern Claw, while Zubeneschamali means the Northern Claw. When you look from Scorpius into Libra, you’re therefore looking toward stars whose names still preserve an older, larger image of the Scorpion.
The Scorpion’s Tale Stretches Back Thousands of Years
People were seeing a scorpion in this part of the sky long before the familiar Greek myths developed. The figure can be traced to the ancient Near East, making Scorpius one of the oldest constellation figures still recognized today.
Not every culture saw a scorpion in its sweeping curve. In Polynesian traditions, the same hooked pattern has been associated with Māui’s great fishhook—a very different picture inspired by the same distinctive shape in the stars. A Kamilaroi tradition from Australia even describes meteors coming from Scorpius, which researchers have suggested may reflect the radiant points of the Alpha Scorpiid and Omega Scorpiid meteor showers.
In Greek mythology, Scorpius became closely connected with the hunter Orion. In one of the best-known versions, Orion’s boastfulness brings about the giant scorpion that ultimately kills him. Other traditions differ over why the Scorpion was sent and which deity was responsible, but Orion and the Scorpion became enduring enemies in the heavens.
There’s a real astronomical relationship behind the celestial separation. Orion dominates Northern Hemisphere winter evenings, while Scorpius belongs to summer. As Scorpius returns to the evening sky, Orion has disappeared; when Orion dominates winter nights, Scorpius is gone.
Ancient storytellers incorporated that relationship into the myth: even after Orion and the Scorpion were placed among the stars, the two enemies were kept on opposite sides of the sky.
