Waxing moon near Scorpion's Heart
Discuss Print Me Email to FriendTonight is Saturday, Sep 06 2008
Here is a familiar figure – to stargazers – and to Texans like me. Just yesterday, my little neighbor – age 5 – told me she saw a scorpion. To those of us who watch the skies, the chance to see a celestial Scorpion is present mostly in the summer months. Here it is – Scorpius the Scorpion – still visible even as summer is fading away.
The Scorpion is one of the few constellations that looks like the creature for which it was named. It’s that curved ‘tail’ of stars looping down toward the southern horizon that does the trick. The star Antares is sometimes called the Heart of the Scorpion. It is a fiery red star, one of the brightest stars in the sky, with a reputation for twinkling fiercely. The fierce twinkling no doubt stems from the fact that, to us in the northern hemisphere, Antares arcs across the southern sky and is often seen low in the sky. And when we look low in the sky, we’re looking through a thicker-than-usual mass of Earth’s atmosphere. The atmosphere, of course, is what causes stars to twinkle.
Scorpius and its bright star Antares can be found this evening near the moon. This moon is still considered a waxing crescent. The first quarter phase won’t come until early in the day tomorrow.
