And what four civilizations saw in the same stars
By Juan Pablo Martín | ASTRONOMIKA TV | May 2026
There is a story that the Greeks told three thousand years ago, that the Maya carved into their temples across Mexico and Central America, and that the islanders between Australia and Papua New Guinea still tell today. They all looked at the same corner of the sky. They all felt that something important was happening there. And each one saw a completely different story.
That alone is enough to blow your mind.
But before we talk about what each culture saw, we need to talk about what that corner of the sky actually hides: a star so enormous that if you put it where our Sun is, its surface would extend well past the orbit of Mars. And right next to it, one of the closest and oldest star clusters in existence, visible through binoculars from your rooftop.
Let’s start from the beginning.
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The Humiliation Orion Never Saw Coming
Orion was the most famous hunter in the world. Not just in his village, not just in his region. In the entire known world, nobody hunted like Orion. And he knew it. Boy, did he know it.
But before we talk about the scorpion, we need to talk about Artemis. Because without understanding Artemis, Orion’s death makes no sense at all.
Artemis was the goddess of the hunt. Virgin by her own choice, she had asked Zeus as a child never to force her to marry or belong to any man. Zeus agreed. Artemis hunted alone, with her nymphs, free from any bond. She was the only woman in Greek mythology who needed no one.
Until she met Orion.
Nobody knows exactly how they met. What every version agrees on is what happened next: Artemis, the goddess who had rejected every god on Olympus, started hunting with Orion. Every single day. Together. The only mortal the most elusive deity in the Greek pantheon had ever let into her world.
And that is when Orion’s ego betrayed him.
Orion’s problem was never his talent. It was his mouth. Orion had a habit of boasting, out loud and in front of the gods, that he could kill any creature that existed on the face of the Earth. Any creature. No exceptions. And with Artemis by his side, his confidence had no limits.
Gaia, goddess of the Earth and mother of all animals, heard him. And decided she had heard enough.
Here is the part nobody expects: Gaia did not send a monster. She did not summon a dragon, or a giant, or any of the epic creatures of the Greek pantheon. She sent a scorpion. A small, ordinary, unremarkable scorpion. The kind of creature you accidentally step on in the garden.
The scorpion found Orion, the most powerful hunter in the known universe, and stung him on the heel. A single sting. End of story.
The humiliation was so perfect, so calculated, that the story took centuries to fade. Other versions of Orion’s death exist, with different gods and different reasons, but they all end the same way: with the hunter defeated and Artemis shattered. Because it was she who asked Zeus to place Orion in the sky forever. Not as punishment. As tribute. It was the only thing she could still do for him.
Zeus agreed. And since he could not ignore the dramatic symmetry, he placed the scorpion on the exact opposite side of the sky. So that Orion would never have to see his executioner again.
That is why, from any point on Earth, Orion and Scorpius never appear together in the night sky. When one rises, the other sets. They have been avoiding each other’s gaze for three thousand years.
But that is only the Greek version. On the other side of the ocean, that same curve of stars was telling completely different stories.
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The Same Sky, Different Stories
Before we go further, something worth pointing out: Scorpius is a fascinating exception in the history of cultural astronomy. Most Western constellations look nothing like what they are supposed to represent. Try finding a real bull in Taurus, or a maiden in Virgo.
Scorpius is different. The curve of bright stars with the raised tail and the stinger at the end genuinely looks like a scorpion. So clearly, in fact, that cultures with no contact between them, separated by entire oceans, reached the same conclusion: that is a scorpion.
Though some saw something else entirely.
The Maya: Where the Sky Swallows the Dead
For the Maya, the night sky was not a spectacle. It was a map to the other world.
The Milky Way was the World Tree, the axis connecting the underworld to the heavens. And at the exact point where the Milky Way crosses the ecliptic, right where the Sun, Moon and planets trace their annual path, stood Scorpius.
That crossing was no accident to the Maya astronomer-priests. It was the entrance to Xibalba, the underworld. The place where the Lords of Death ruled in eternal darkness.
When the Scorpius constellation appeared on the horizon during summer nights, it was the signal: the gate was open. Not metaphorically. Literally open, according to Maya cosmology. The moment for rituals, for communication with the ancestors, for offerings that maintained the balance between worlds.
Researchers who have traced the Popol Vuh, the sacred Maya book of creation, found something remarkable: the story of the twin heroes who descend to the underworld to defeat the Lords of Death follows the movement of these stars across the sky. The descent happens when Scorpius and the center of the Milky Way disappear below the horizon. Their triumph and return coincide with their reappearance at dawn.
The Maya did not just tell stories about the sky. They used the sky to preserve their most important story, written in movements that nobody could erase or burn. And they succeeded, at least in part, despite the Spanish conquistadors destroying most of their codices in the sixteenth century.
The Torres Strait Islanders: The Warrior Standing in His Canoe
Thousands of kilometers away, on the islands separating Australia from Papua New Guinea, the Torres Strait Islanders looked at the same stars and saw no scorpion. They saw Tagai.
Tagai was a warrior and fisherman of great reputation. One day he went fishing with twelve men. When he returned to the canoe, he discovered that his crew had drunk all the water and eaten all the food for the journey, breaking the most basic laws of the sea.
Tagai, blinded by rage, killed them all.
Then, as the fury cooled and guilt set in, he sent them to the sky. Six he placed in the Pleiades. The other six, in Orion’s Belt. And he himself ascended, standing in his canoe.
That canoe is the stars of Scorpius.
Tagai standing on the curve of bright stars, with a spear in one hand and sea fruit in the other, is a constellation the Torres Strait Islanders still use today for navigation. A figure of moral authority who killed his own crew, immortalized in the sky as a permanent warning:
The laws of the community are never broken. Never.
Three cultures with no contact between them. A scorpion, a gateway to the underworld, a warrior standing in his canoe. Same stars.
And if this has you wanting more, it is worth knowing that Scorpius has a direct rival in the zodiac: Virgo, the constellation exactly opposite in the sky. When Scorpius dominates the south on summer nights, Virgo is already saying goodbye on the western horizon. Two constellations that never share the full sky, each with their own stories and their own defining object. The story of Virgo is just as good.
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The Star That Would Make Mars Disappear, and Its Secret Neighbors
Four civilizations, four stories. But there is something none of them could have known: what is actually there.
Antares: The Star Named After a Planet That Is Bigger Than an Orbit
The name says it all, though few people catch it at first. “Antares” comes from Greek and means “rival of Ares,” that is, rival of Mars. The Greeks named it that because its reddish-orange color is almost identical to that of the red planet. At certain times of year, Mars and Antares appear together in the southern sky and it is very hard to tell them apart with the naked eye.
Antares is a red supergiant. And when we say big, we need an analogy to make the number mean something.
Our Sun has a diameter of about 864,000 miles. Antares has between 700 and 900 times that diameter, depending on the exact moment you measure it, because the star pulses and its size changes constantly.
Every calculation agrees on one thing: if Antares were where our Sun is right now, its surface would not just reach Earth. It would pass Earth. It would pass Mars. It would extend to somewhere between Mars and Jupiter, swallowing the entire asteroid belt on the way. The whole Earth would be inside Antares.
And yet, from here it looks like a bright reddish dot in the May and June night sky. That tells you how far away it is: about 550 light-years. The light you see tonight left Antares around the year 1475, when the Aztecs (Mexica) still ruled central Mexico and Cortés had not yet been born.
Antares is in the final stages of its life. In cosmic terms, it is an old, exhausted star that will at some point, nobody knows exactly when, explode in a supernova. When it does, it will be visible in daylight from Earth for several weeks, brighter than the full Moon. The greatest spectacle any human being has ever seen in the night sky, and we will be here to witness it.
M4: The 12-Billion-Year-Old Cluster That Fits in Your Binoculars
Just 1.3 degrees from Antares, so close they almost touch in the sky, lives M4. It is a globular cluster: a compact sphere of hundreds of thousands of stars orbiting our galaxy like an ancient satellite.
M4 sits about 6,000 light-years from Earth, making it one of the closest globular clusters in existence and the easiest to locate from the northern hemisphere. It is about 12.2 billion years old. For perspective: our Sun is 4.6 billion years old. The stars of M4 formed when the universe was young and our Solar System did not exist even as an idea.
What makes M4 remarkable is not just its age. It is that you can see it without being a professional astronomer or spending a fortune on equipment.
With a pair of 7×50 binoculars like the CELESTRON Cometron 7×50 (Mexico | United States | Spain) you can already make out the fuzzy patch of M4 next to Antares. But with 15×70 binoculars like the CELESTRON SkyMaster 15×70 (Mexico | United States | Spain), everything changes: M4 becomes a real object with texture, with clearly visible circular structure. It is no longer a smudge. It is a cluster.
You are looking at 100,000 stars that are three times older than our Sun, from your backyard, with equipment that fits in a backpack.
If you want to take the next step, the ZWO Seestar S50 (Mexico | United States | Spain) completely changes the experience. With binoculars you see M4 as a circular fuzzy patch with some structure. With the Seestar, the globular cluster appears resolved into individual stars, with the black contrast of deep space behind them. That is the difference between knowing something is there and actually seeing it. You can also point it at NGC 6231, the open cluster in the scorpion’s tail, which barely registers in binoculars but opens up into dozens of bright stars with distinct colors through the Seestar. The Smart Telescope finds the object on its own, frames it, and delivers a processed image in real time. No prior astronomy knowledge required to get started.
The Heart of the Azure Dragon
A third perspective worth mentioning, because it connects to the Chinese astronomical tradition we did not cover above but that deserves its moment.
In classical Chinese astronomy, the stars of Scorpius formed part of the Azure Dragon of the East, one of the four celestial guardians. Antares had its own name: Huǒxīng, literally “fire star.” Together with the two stars flanking it, it formed Xin, the heart of the dragon. And in imperial court protocol, that same star represented the Emperor’s throne, with its neighboring stars embodying the Crown Prince and the son of a concubine on either side.
An entire dynasty’s politics, projected into the sky.
One star that for the Greeks rivaled a planet, for the Maya marked the gateway to the underworld, for the Australians was a warrior’s canoe, and for the Chinese was the heart of a dragon and the throne of an emperor. Four ways of looking at the same point in the sky. Four completely different truths about the same thing.
Same stars. Four completely different worlds.
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What Do You See?
Next time you are outside on a clear May or June night, look south. Find the curve of bright stars with that intense red dot at the center. You already know that red dot is a star that would swallow Mars’s orbit. You already know that right next to it is a ball of hundreds of thousands of 12-billion-year-old stars sitting 6,000 light-years away. You already know that curve has been a scorpion, a gateway to the underworld, a canoe and the heart of a dragon, depending on who was watching.
The sky did not change. Only the eyes did.
If you want to actually see it, not just imagine it, a basic pair of binoculars is enough to start tonight. And if you want real resolution, individual stars and objects that binoculars cannot reach, at ASTRONOMIKA TV we show all of that live from our rooftop in Guadalajara, on our YouTube channel.
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Frequently Asked Questions About the Scorpius Constellation
When is the Scorpius Constellation visible?
The Scorpius constellation is visible in the northern hemisphere from May through August, with the best viewing in July when it reaches its highest point in the southern sky. In the southern hemisphere it is visible almost year-round and climbs high in the winter sky during June and July.
Why is Antares called that?
Antares means “rival of Ares” in Greek, where Ares is the god of war that the Romans called Mars. The star got that name because its intense reddish color is almost identical to that of the planet Mars. At certain times of year, both appear close together in the sky and it is very hard to tell them apart with the naked eye, even for experienced observers.
How big is Antares compared to the Sun?
Antares has between 700 and 900 times the Sun’s diameter, and its size changes because it is a variable star that pulses. If it were in the Sun’s position, its surface would extend beyond Mars’s orbit and reach into the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Earth would be completely inside the star.
Can I see M4 without a telescope?
With binoculars and a reasonably dark sky, yes. Locate Antares, the brightest and most reddish star in the constellation, then move your binoculars approximately 1.3 degrees to the west. M4 appears as a round, fuzzy patch. With higher-power binoculars like 15×70 you can start to perceive its granular structure.
When will Antares explode as a supernova?
There is no precise date. Astronomers know that Antares is in the final stages of its stellar life and that at some point it will go supernova. When it does, it will be visible in broad daylight from Earth for several weeks. The uncertainty is real: it could happen in a thousand years or in a hundred thousand.
Did the Maya really have their own constellations?
Yes. The Maya developed a highly sophisticated astronomical system entirely independent of the Greek system we use today. They identified constellations, tracked planets with remarkable precision, and linked celestial movement to their ritual calendar and mythology. The region of Scorpius was especially important because it marks the crossing of the Milky Way with the ecliptic, which the Maya interpreted as the entrance to Xibalba, the underworld. Much of that knowledge was lost when Spanish conquistadors burned the Maya codices in the sixteenth century. What survived continues to astonish researchers.
Are there other versions of the myth of Orion’s death?
Yes, several. Greek mythology is not a single book with one official version: myths were told differently depending on the region, the era and the poet narrating them. The story of Gaia and the scorpion is the one that directly explains the constellation and the eternal separation between Orion and Scorpius in the sky. The other versions have their own dramas, but that is a story for another time.
How do I find the Scorpius Constellation without an app?
Look south between May and August. Your reference point is Antares, the brightest star in that area with its unmistakable reddish color. Once you find it, the curve of bright stars sweeping down and up to form the scorpion’s tail is impossible to confuse with any other constellation. It is one of the few that actually looks like what it is supposed to be.
Is the Scorpius Constellation visible from Mexico and Latin America?
Yes, and with an advantage over northern latitudes. From Mexico, Central America and across Latin America, Scorpius reaches a considerable height in the southern sky between May and August, high enough to see the full constellation including the tail and stinger. From further north, such as Europe or the northern United States, the tail sits partially below the horizon and you miss the best part.
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Sources and Recommended Reading
Books
Ridpath, I. (2018). Star Tales. Lutterworth Press. Classic reference on the mythological origins of the constellations, with analysis of primary Greek sources.
Schele, L. and Freidel, D. (1993). A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya. Harper Perennial. Foundational work on Maya astronomy and cosmology, including Scorpius’s role in the mythology of the Popol Vuh.
Norris, R. and Norris, C. (2009). Emu Dreaming: An Introduction to Australian Aboriginal Astronomy. Emu Dreaming. Introduction to the astronomical systems of Aboriginal Australians and Pacific Island peoples.
Harney, B. Y. and Cairns, H. (2003). Dark Sparklers. Hugh Cairns. The most complete record of the Wardaman people’s astronomical knowledge, including the stars of Scorpius in their initiation ceremonies.
Digital Sources
NASA Science. Messier 4 (NGC 6121). science.nasa.gov. Official technical profile of the M4 globular cluster with data on distance, age and stellar composition.
Ridpath, I. Star Tales: Scorpius. ianridpath.com/startales. Detailed analysis of Greco-Latin sources on the constellation, including references to Eratosthenes and Ovid.
The Conversation. (2016). Kindred Skies: Ancient Greeks and Aboriginal Australians Saw Constellations in Common. theconversation.com. Peer-reviewed academic article on the connections between Greek and Aboriginal Australian astronomy.