When I pull up in front of my house after my work shift, it's usually around 12:15 am. Sometimes I'll look out of my car window at the sky...at least when it's clear...and see what the star patterns are. Lately, I've been noticing, looking at that time just above the southeastern horizon, the Zodiac constellation Scorpius rising up into the sky. It is marked by the three-star "claw" on its western end, with the first-magnitude red giant star Antares further down the line in the constellation. Antares is so big, by the way, that if it were centered where our Sun is, then our Earth would be inside it! I remember, back in the late spring of 1964, right after I had learned from my father about the constellations and their brightest stars, of waiting late into the night to see Scorpius rising. And I'm experiencing it again 52 years later, but with a couple of notable exceptions: the presence of the planets Mars and Saturn...
Saturn, situated a little to the left of Antares as you're looking at it in the sky, is its usual brightness, which is nowhere as bright as Venus or Jupiter (the latter is also visible at night, situated in the constellation Leo), but still a standout in the night sky. Mars, on the other hand, is now much, much brighter than it usually is: in astronomical terms, this is attributed to it currently being in "opposition". Anyway, when I first saw it a few days ago in Scorpius, I was taken aback: the Red Planet clearly dominates this section of the sky...
If the sky is clear later tonight, why not step outside and look to the southeast? I drew a map of the small section I'm writing about: you can see, on the right, Scorpius,with the prominent stars connected by broken lines to show the constellation's pattern. The three stars of the "claws" are at the top as it rises, and Antares is below, closer to the horizon. You'll also notice that Mars, Saturn, and Antares form the vertices of a right triangle: looks like one of those 3x4x5 triangles from my old junior high math days...
