Scorpio

Scorpio is a very nice summer constellation. It shows up early, just to the west of Sagittarius and is easily recognized unless the observer is too far north, in which case part of the tail may be below the horizon. The brightest star is first magnitude Antares, a super giant that glows distinctly reddish. Occasionally, Mars will be in the same region of the sky and the two can easily be confused for one another. At 300 light years distance, Antares would be much dimmer if it were not 300 times the sun's diameter and 3000 times as luminous. Just to the right (west) of Antares is the beautiful globular cluster M4 and just above and a bit east of the end of the tail of the scorpion is the very nice open star cluster M7. The region around Antares and two areas, one about 5 degrees north of the star and another about 5 degrees west of the star are host to emission nebulae which can be seen on long exposure photographs. Scorpio's tail resides mostly in the Milky Way which shows up in my photograph below.