45 Fun Facts About Scorpio

Scorpio is the zodiac's eighth sign, counting from which sign?

Aries: the count starts at the March equinox, the moment the Sun enters Aries, rather than at the new year in January, and that puts Scorpio eighth of the twelve.

What is the classical ruling planet of Scorpio?

Mars: classical astrology gave the war god's planet two signs to rule, and Scorpio gained a second ruler only after telescopes had added new planets to the sky.

Which body do modern astrologers assign as Scorpio's ruler?

Astrologers kept Pluto in charge even after astronomers demoted it to a dwarf planet in 2006.

Scorpio belongs to which element?

Scorpio is a Water sign, sharing that element with Cancer and Pisces; the three Water signs are the ones astrology links to emotion and intuition.

What is Scorpio's modality?

Scorpio's modality is Fixed, the quality given to the four signs that fall in the middle of a season; Scorpio holds mid-autumn in the northern hemisphere.

Which sign is opposite Scorpio on the zodiac wheel?

Taurus sits directly opposite Scorpio on the zodiac wheel, 180° away, so the Sun occupies Taurus from late April to late May, six months from Scorpio season.

Under the tropical zodiac, the Sun is in Scorpio on average between which dates?

October 23 to November 21 are the sign's average dates, yet the Sun does not reach the actual stars of Scorpius until about November 23, after Scorpio season has ended.

Scorpio season lasts a month, but how long is the Sun actually inside Scorpius?

About 1 week: the Sun's path crosses only a sliver of Scorpius, so it enters around November 23 and is gone by the end of the month, where Virgo holds it for some six weeks.

Which constellation, the so-called '13th sign', does the Sun enter straight after leaving Scorpius?

Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer, holds the Sun for about 18 days from the end of November, far longer than Scorpius itself, yet tropical astrology gives it no sign.

Which body is traditionally said to be in its 'fall' in Scorpio?

The Moon is in its fall in Scorpio under traditional essential dignities, because its exaltation lies in the opposite sign; Jupiter, by contrast, is exalted in Cancer.

In traditional astrology, which part of the body does Scorpio rule?

The reproductive organs: astrologers pair the sign with the pelvis, bowels and sexual organs, one reason Scorpio is read as the zodiac's sign of sexuality.

Which tarot trump is paired with Scorpio in astrology?

Death: tarot readers take the card to mean endings, change and transformation rather than dying, a fit for a sign that astrologers tie to rebirth.

With Libra on one side of Scorpius in the zodiac, which constellation lies on the other?

Sagittarius: on the zodiac wheel the archer follows the scorpion directly, though in the real sky the Sun crosses a thirteenth constellation between the two.

What colour does Antares, the brightest star in Scorpius, appear to the naked eye?

Antares looks distinctly Reddish to the naked eye because it is a cool red supergiant with a surface temperature near 3,600 K, far below the Sun's 5,800 K.

The Greek star name Antares is usually translated as what?

Rival of Ares: Ares was the Greek god of war, and ancient skywatchers named the star as a match for the planet that bears his name.

Looking toward the tail of Scorpius, stargazers face roughly which part of the Milky Way?

Its centre: the galaxy's core lies just beyond the scorpion's tail, which is why this patch of sky is so crowded with star clusters and glowing nebulae.

If Antares replaced the Sun, roughly how far out would its surface extend?

Into the asteroid belt: Antares is hundreds of times wider than the Sun, so its surface would swallow all four inner planets and stop short of Jupiter.

Astronomers expect the massive star Antares to end its life as what?

A supernova: Antares is massive enough to collapse and explode, leaving a neutron star or a black hole, and whether that comes tomorrow or a million years off, it will be a spectacle from Earth.

In Persian sky lore, Antares is said to be one of four stars known by which title?

The royal stars: with Aldebaran, Regulus and Fomalhaut, Antares is said to have guarded one quarter of the sky, as the watcher of the west.

The stars Shaula and Lesath mark which part of the celestial scorpion?

The stinger: the pair sits at the very tip of the tail, so far south that from the northern United States they climb only about a fist's width above the horizon.

What nickname do the close pair of tail-tip stars Lambda and Upsilon Scorpii share?

The Cat's Eyes is the nickname for Lambda and Upsilon Scorpii, which sit less than a degree apart at the tip of the stinger and shine at magnitudes 1.6 and 2.7.

Scorpions belong to which class of animals?

Arachnids: despite pincers that look borrowed from a lobster, scorpions are eight-legged relatives of spiders, mites and ticks.

How does a mother scorpion carry her newborn young?

On her back: scorpions give birth to live young rather than laying eggs, and the brood rides on the mother until their soft shells harden.

When do most scorpions come out to hunt?

At night: by day most scorpions hide in burrows, cracks or under stones, which is why they are so rarely seen even where they are common.

Messier 4, a fuzzy patch beside Antares, is among the nearest to Earth of which kind of object?

Globular clusters: Charles Messier picked this one apart into individual stars in 1764, the only globular his telescopes could resolve; the rest of his list waited some 20 years for William Herschel's larger ones.

M6 in Scorpius is nicknamed after which creature?

A butterfly is the creature M6 evokes: the open cluster's stars fan out like wings, hence the Butterfly Cluster, with the orange giant BM Scorpii its brightest member.

Which object in Scorpius, M7, is named after the ancient astronomer who recorded it?

The Ptolemy Cluster is M7, an open cluster bright enough to see without a telescope, which Ptolemy recorded around AD 130 and took for a patch of nebula.

NGC 6302 in Scorpius, a bipolar cloud of gas shed by a dying star, is known by which insect nickname?

The Bug Nebula, NGC 6302, hides one of the hottest known central stars, a white dwarf at over 200,000 K, behind a dense dusty torus that pinches the gas into two lobes.

In Greek myth, a giant scorpion killed which famous hunter with its sting?

Orion: the two were set on opposite sides of the sky, said to be why Orion sinks below the horizon just as the scorpion rises.

In Greek myth, which goddess sent the giant scorpion after a hunter boasted he could kill every wild beast?

Gaia: in the telling that Eratosthenes and Hyginus record, the Earth herself answers the boast against her creatures, though another version has Artemis send the scorpion.

In Greek myth, the sight of the celestial scorpion made which youth drop the reins of the Sun's chariot?

Phaethon: the runaway horses dragged the Sun so low that the Earth began to burn, and Zeus struck the boy down with a thunderbolt.

Which ancient people's name for Scorpius, MUL.GIR.TAB, reads literally as 'the creature with a burning sting'?

The Babylonians: the scorpion is far older than Greek star lore, and its Sumerian forerunner, GIR-TAB, goes back more than 5,000 years.

In Hawaii, Scorpius is known as the fishhook of which demigod?

Maui, the demigod, owns the fishhook Hawaiians see in Scorpius; the hook, Manaiakalani, is the one he used to haul islands up from the sea.

In Chinese astronomy, Antares and its neighbours form the heart of which celestial creature?

The Azure Dragon: the Chinese sky has no scorpion here, so Antares marks the dragon's heart and the curve of the scorpion's tail becomes the dragon's tail.

Which country's flag shows the stars of Scorpius, each one standing for a north-eastern state?

Brazil: its flag copies the sky over Rio de Janeiro on 15 November 1889, the day the republic was declared, and eight of its state stars belong to Scorpius.

Which Egyptian goddess, shown with a scorpion on her head, protected against venomous stings?

Serket, the scorpion goddess, wore a scorpion on her head and was invoked against venomous stings; her gilded statue is one of the four goddesses guarding Tutankhamun's canopic shrine.

Which is the only continent where no scorpions live?

Antarctica: thought of as desert animals, scorpions have in fact settled every other continent, from rainforests to the Himalayas, and can survive temperatures well below freezing.

About how many scorpion species carry venom strong enough to kill a person?

About 30: counts run from 25 to 40 out of a couple of thousand species, because scorpion venom is tuned to kill the insects they eat, not people.

Under what kind of light does a scorpion's exoskeleton glow?

Ultraviolet: a fluorescent substance in the scorpion's hard outer shell glows blue-green under a UV lamp, so researchers sweep the ground with one to find them.

Roughly how many years old are the oldest scorpion fossils?

400 million: scorpions appear in rocks 420 to 435 million years old and are often called some of the first land animals, though whether the earliest lived in the sea is still debated.

Which gemstone is the November birthstone, covering most of Scorpio season?

Topaz: pure topaz is colourless, and traces of other elements give it a rainbow of tints from golden-brown to blue; it shares the month with a second stone, citrine.

How were the stars of neighbouring Libra regarded in Ancient Greek times?

As the scorpion's claws is how the Greeks saw Libra's stars, calling them Chelai, the Claws; the names Zubenelgenubi and Zubeneschamali preserve the Arabic for southern and northern claw.

Scorpius is one of the 48 constellations listed in which second-century star catalogue?

The Almagest: written around AD 150, it stayed the standard star catalogue until Tycho Brahe produced a far more accurate one at the end of the 16th century.

What animal-themed nickname does the star-forming region NGC 6334 in Scorpius carry?

The Cat's Paw: the nebula's glowing clouds are named for their paw-print shape, and inside them one of the galaxy's busiest stellar nurseries is turning out massive young stars.

What feature distinguishes Scorpio's glyph from the similar M-shaped glyph of Virgo?

A barbed tail arrow distinguishes Scorpio's glyph from Virgo's: both are built on an M-like shape, but Scorpio's final stroke turns outward into a pointed stinger.