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Whiles Scorpio, dreading Sagittarius' dart
Whose bow prest bent in flight the string had slipped,
Down slid into the ocean flood apart
Thomas Sackfille (1536-1608)
Like its nearby neighbor Sagittarius, the constellation Scorpio never rises far above the southern horizon of skygazer in the Northern Hemisphere. Scorpio appears like a cursive "S" or the integral sign of mathematics. Both its head and middle sections consist of short lies of three stars, while its tail is made up of five or six bright stars that curl around to form a semicircle. To see Scorpio’s entire spidery pattern, you will need a flat horizon and of course the right time of year.
Exactly in the middle of Scorpio is located a brilliant red star with an apparent magnitude of 0.9. This star is alpha Scoprii, Antares. The meaning of Antares is "like Mars". Both it and Mars have a similar color and because Scorpio is on the ecliptic (it's the eighth sign of the zodiac), Mars and Antares occasionally appear like identical twins quite close together. Antares is a giant among giants. If Antares' center was located where our Sun's center is, Earth would be located well inside it.