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The Story of the Scorpion
The Story of the Scorpion
There are multiple stories about how scorpius became a constellation. In one story Orion boasted that he could kill any wild beast. To prove Orion wrong and as a punishment, the scorpion was sent to kill him. But after Orion was killed, Asclepius the healer treated his wounds and Orion rose again. This story is shown in the movement of the constellations: As Scopius rises in the east, Orion sets in the west, but the following night Orion will rise again. In another version of the encounter between Orion and the scorpion, Orion threw himself upon Artemis, the goddess of hunting. Insulted by Orion’s behavior, Artemis sent the scorpion to sting him.
Fun Facts!
Scorpius hasn’t always looked the way it does today. The ancient Greek constellation for Scorpius was larger until the 1st century BCE, when the Romans separated its claws and from them created a separate constellation for Libra.
In Egypt, the stars of Scorpius were once seen as a serpent, while among the Maori people of New Zealand, Scorpius represented a fishhook. In the myth, the hero Maui was fishing when he pulled out of the ocean a piece of land, which was New Zealand. The hook broke free from the land with such force that it flew right up into the sky, where it had remained ever since.
The brightest star in Scorpius is Antares, which is several hundred times larger than our sun. Antares’s name comes from the Greek for “rival of Mars.” This is because Antares has a reddish-orange color like the planet Mars.
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