Scorpius Constellation

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The constellation of Scorpius is a large and includes many bright stars, that of the lower half of body is bathed in the summer's Milky Way

Scorpius

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Constellation Chart

The Scorpion The constellation of Scorpius is a large and includes many bright stars, that of the lower half of body is bathed in the summer's Milky Way. The asterism of a vast skewed shape of "S" was taken an attention in many ancient cultures, for an example, it was regarded as a gigantic fishhook in Japanese fishing villages. Alpha Scorpii is well known as Antares meaning of "Rival of Mars", emitting pale red light at the heart of Scorpion. The star is considered as a supergiant and estimated to be about 230 sun diameters. It's about 600 light years away.

Scorpius includes a broad region of the Galaxy, in the general direction of the Core. This explains the density of the Milky Way in the constellation, and the large number of star clusters found here.
Fourth Cosmic Ray : Linking Through Mercury
"These subjects are motivated by a deep sense of harmony in all things. They act as the link between the separateness of things, creating unity and making all things equal by bridging apparent barriers. This harmonising effect comes from the inside, acting outwards, and is therefore totally selfless. Consequently, such subjects are opposed to selfishness and hold true brotherhood of man as their highest ideal. They are adept at co-ordinating various projects and, being able to see a common denominator in opposing people or ideals, have a good understanding of these paradoxes. Although they can take pleasure from this ability to see things from another's point of view, it can also lead to painful and disturbing experiences. They enjoy become involved with a lot of people, but are very aware of how others see them; this leads them to give only what they receive. These folk are easygoing, preferring to give way rather than upset a peaceful atmosphere.

You can see a reddish bright star, Antares, at the left side in the picture. And a globular cluster located just one degree west of Antares is M4 (NGC6121). It's very close from the Antares, so we can find easily the cluster with binoculars, but without a larger telescope it will not appear very spectacular. M4 is characteristic as its reddish color although we cannot detect the peculiar colors in almost all of other globular clusters.
The cluster consists of about 10 thousand stars, and about seven thousand light years away.

At around the tail of the Scorpion, we can enjoy two open clusters of M6 and M7. M6 (NGC6405) is the second-best cluster of the constellation after M7. Distance of appearance between these clusters is just 3 degrees, so we can appreciate clusters simultaneously with binoculars. M7 (See next page) can be detected as a group of bright stars easily, but this one needs more magnification.
The cluster is about 1850 light years away, about 600 light years farther than that of M7.

M7 (NGC6475) is clearly the best open cluster of the constellation. This magnificent object is extremely large (about a size of 1 degree) and quite bright, being visible even to the naked eye at a viewpoint far from urban area. You will be impressed the splendid scenery of about 50 stars scattered in the Milky Way with binoculars. In fact, in the Messier's catalogue, M7 is positioned at the southest point in the sphere, the culminate latitude of that is only about 20 degrees at Tokyo. And M7 is one of rare objects known before the telescope was invented, the cluster was found out by an ancient astronomer Ptolemy in 2nd century. This cluster has another name of "Ptolemy's Cluster".

This stellar swarm is M80 (NGC 6093), one of the densest of the 147 known globular star clusters in the Milky Way Galaxy. Located about 28,000 light-years from Earth, M80 contains hundreds of thousands of stars, all held together by their mutual gravitational attraction. Globular clusters are particularly useful for studying stellar evolution, since all of the stars in the cluster have the same age (about 15 billion years), but cover a range of stellar masses. Every star visible in this image is either more highly evolved than, or in a few rare cases more massive than, our own Sun. Especially obvious are the bright red giants, which are stars similar to the Sun in mass that are nearing the ends of their lives.

NGC6334 is a red diffused nebula with a size of about 20 arc minutes positioned at around a tail of scorpion. It consists of several segments of three round red lights and a dimmed vast region, only appears clearly on long-exposure photos. The nebula has a nickname of "The Telescope Goldfish Nebula" in Japan, it looks like a kind of goldfish with its eyes sticked out. The nebula has a median transit with an altitude of lower than 20 degrees at Tokyo, it's hard to photograph the nebula in good condition at Japan.
Distance of the nebula is estimated approximately 1230 light years.

NGC6357 is one of vast hydrogen gaseous nebulae spread around the tail of Scorpius. The nebula and NGC6334 are paralleled just 2 degrees apart, it should be easily able to capture these attractive objects in a single frame by using of medium-ranged telephoto lenses. Additionally, you can gaze at two noticeable open clusters of M6 and M7 being next to the nebula, one of the extraordinary photogenic celestial fields. NGC6357 has an apparent size of about 50 arc minutes, and is often called "The Cluster Amaryllis Nebula" at Japan (in Japanese "Higan-bana Nebula"), because the shape of it looks like a huge reddish flower.

Description to the picture: NGC 6302 The picture was taken up at the 22.Mai1998 by the European Southern Observatory with the 8,2m VL telescope of the Paranal Observatory. At the end of their life stars blow themselves, far beyond their past size up and push off, with the following collapse, large parts of their outside gas covering into space. After this collapse the stars remain first for some thousand years very hot and become brighter, by the reduction of their surface. Their ultraviolet radiation ionizes thereby the gas repelled before, which begins to shine thereby. The above butterfly fog developed in this way. The star hp 155520, which brings the fog to shining, is covered by the diagonal view on the fog, is good however by the brightness in the center of the fog to suspect. The gas of this fog is to out-flow with 400km/s into the universe.
Planetary Destinations In Scorpius
In the writings by Alice A. Bailey she mention's that there are seven solar systems each with ten planets in each one of the seven major
constellations, the seven being Aquarius, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Libra, Virgo, and leo. Scorpius is the original point of the
Fourth cosmic ray. some were in Scorpius is one of those seven solar system mentioned by Alice A. Bailey in her writings and it is
here were the Fourth Cosmic Ray is emitted. The name given for this ray is Human Hierarchy. The Initiates Lords Of Sacrifice.

Parent Star: HD 147513 (G3/G5 V) in the constellation of Scorpius is located at a distance of 42.07 Light Years from our Solar system. Co-ordinates are Right Ascension: 16 24 01.2899 & Declination: -39 11 34.729. The apparent Magnitude of the star is 5.376. The Inner Edge of Habitability Zone is 0.51 AU & the Outer Edge of Habitability Zone: 1.6 AU. Orbiting around HD 147513 is planet
HD 147513 b is believed to be a water cloud jovian, eccentric and its exitence has been confirmed. The planets appearance is a white water ice clouds. The planet is positioned at outer edge of the habitability zone at mean orbital distance of 1.26 AU. The planet Orbits around the star every 540.4 ± 4.4 Days and was discovered by M. Mayor, D. Naef, F. Pepe, D. Queloz, N.C. Santos, S. Udry on 18 Jun 2002 .
Star A is listed as HD 147513 in the Henry Draper (1837-82) Catalogue with extension (HDE), a massive photographic stellar spectrum survey carried out by Annie Jump Cannon (1863-1941) and Edward Charles Pickering (1846-1919) from 1911 to 1915 under the sponsorship of a memorial fund created by Henry's wife, Anna Mary Palmer. As a relatively bright star in Earth's night sky, Star A is catalogued as Harvard Revised (HR) 6094, a numbering system derived from the 1908 Revised Harvard Photometry catalogue of stars visible to many Humans with the naked eye. The HR system has been preserved through its successor, the Yale Bright Star Catalogue -- revised and expanded through the hard work of E. Dorrit Hoffleit and others.

Parent Star: HD 162020 (K2 V) in the constellation of Scorpius is located at a distance of 101.95 Light Years from our Solar system. Co-ordinates are Right Ascension: 17 50 38.3575 & Declination: -40 19 06.056. The apparent Magnitude of the star is 9.18. The Inner Edge of Habitability Zone is 0.24 AU & the Outer Edge of Habitability Zone: 0.77 AU. Orbiting around HD 162020 is planet
HD 162020 b is believed to be a Brown Dwarf and its exitence has been confirmed. The planets appearance is dark brown haze. The planet is positioned at the outer Edge of the habitability zone at mean orbital distance of 0.072 AU. The planet Orbits around the star every 8.428198 ± 0.000056 Days and was discovered by Michel Mayor, Dominique Naef, Francesco Pepe, Didier Queloz, Nuno Santos, Stephane Udry and Michel Burnet in 2000.
Perhaps considering its raised mass, The planet orbiting around Star HD162020 could be seen rather like a "dwarf brown", i.e. a star of mass higher than a planet giant but lower than a star.
Planetary Star In Globular Cluster M4 (NGC 6121) In Scorpius

You can see a reddish bright star, Antares, at the left side in the picture. And a globular cluster located just one degree west of Antares is M4 (NGC6121). It's very close from the Antares, so we can find easily the cluster with binoculars, but without a larger telescope it will not appear very spectacular. M4 is characteristic as its reddish color although we cannot detect the peculiar colors in almost all of other globular clusters. The cluster consists of about 10 thousand stars, and about seven thousand light years away.
Three unlikely companions - two burned-out stars and a planet - orbit each other near the crowded core of an ancient globular cluster of more than 100,000 stars. Only one companion, however, is visible in the image a burned-out white dwarf star. Radio astronomers discovered the white dwarf and the other burned-out star - a rapidly spinning neutron star, called a pulsar - a decade ago. The third companion's identity was a mystery. Was it a planet or a brown dwarf? The object was too small and too dim to image. The green Ring will help you with marking your Destination.

The PSR B1620-26 system lies around 5,600 ly away in globular cluster M4, boxed in green, directly west of red supergiant star Antares in Constellation Scorpius.
Parent Star: PSR B1620-26 (Pulsar) in the constellation of Scorpius is located at a distance of 12399.4 Light Years from our Solar system. Co-ordinates are Right Ascension: 16 23 38.24 & Declination: -26 31 53.9. Orbiting around PSR B1620-26 are objects White Dwarf Companion PSR B1620-26 b and planetary body PSR B1620-26 c
PSR B1620-26 b Is in the constellation of Scorpius is located at a distance of 12399.4 Light Years from our Solar system. Co-ordinates are Right Ascension: 16 23 38.24 & Declination: -26 31 53.9. Mass: 0.34 Solar Masses and the distance from primary star PSR B1620-26 is 1 AU.
PSR B1620-26 c is believed to be a Pulsar Planet and its exitence has been confirmed. The planet is positioned out side the habitability zone at mean orbital distance of 23 AU. The planet Orbits around the star every 100 Years and was discovered byVarious in 1996. Habitability: The planet is subject to intense radiation from the pulsar primary PSR B1620-26.
Pulsar B1620-26
Despite an estimated age of around 13 billion years, PSR B1620-26 or PSR J1623-2631 (16:23:38.22-23:31:53.8 J2000; and 16:23:38.24-26:31:53.9, ICRS 2000) is a neutron star that is spinning just under 100 times per second and emitting regular radio pulses like a lighthouse beam. It is believed to be an old neutron star that has been spun up to a millisecond period by accretion from a stellar companion in a highly circular orbit (e= 0.025) during an X-ray binary phase (Sigurdsson et al, 2003).

Stars In Scorpius
The constellation was once much larger, but the western portion representing the claws of the scorpion was given to Libra.
The star table indicates just how bright many of Scorpius's stars are; in fact the constellation is one of the brightest of the larger constellations.
Alpha Scorpii is better known as Antares ("Rival of Mars"). This is one of the four Royal Stars of the ancients, along with Aldebaran, Regulus, and Fomalhaut. It glitters with an unusual metallic red while the entire region is bathed in a pale red nebula, lit from the same star.
This red supergiant has a visual binary that just might be visible, depending on local conditions and the size of one's scope (see below). The star is estimated to be between 285 sun diameters to about 700 suns. It's 600 light years away.
Due west 1º (about half the distance to sigma Sco) is the bright globular cluster M4, while another globular cluster, M80, is 4º NNW of Antares. See below for these deep sky objects.
Double stars in Scorpius:
Alpha Scorpii is a visual binary which may be difficult to resolve due to the brightness of the primary. Try a moonlight night, which should cut the glare of the brighter star: 1.1, 5.4; PA 274º, separation 2.6".
The companion is usually described as green in colour, probably a visual effect created by the red glow of Antares. The star is estimated to orbit its primary every 900 years.
Beta Scorpii. This superb double has a pleasant colour contrast: white and bluish-green. 2.6, 4.9; PA 23º, 13.7".
Nu Scorpii is a multiple system, a "double-double". That is, each of the visible components (AC) is also a primary of a closer component; these are termed AB and CD.
AC: 4.4, 6.4; 337º, and 41" separation.
AB: 4.4, 5.4; PA 2º, 1.3".
CD: 6.3, 8.0; 51º, 2.3".
Xi Scorpii is also a multiple system, a system which also includes the next binary system as well (Struve 1999).
Components AB form a close binary with period of 45.7 years. The companion is now gradually drawing away from the primary: PA 308º and separation 0.39".
Sigma Scorpii: a double with faint companion. AB: 2.9, 8.5; PA 273º, separation 20".
Struve 1999 is gravitationally attached to the Xi Scorpii system, although at a distance of about 7000 AU (an "AU"--astronomical unit-- being the distance of the earth from the sun).
The binary is found just south of Xi Scorpii, two yellow stars of nearly equal brightness: 7.4, 8.1; 99º, 11.6".
Variable stars in Scorpius:
RR Scorpii is the brightest long-period variable in the constellation, with a visual magnitude range of 5.0-12.4 every 281.45 days. In 1999 the maximum should occur around the end of May.