This constellation represents a scorpion that killed Orion the hunter. The Gods decided to prevent any more trouble between them and so put them on opposite sides of the sky.

Scorpius like its neightbour Sagittarius lies over a particularly rich segment of the Milky Way that crossed that galactic core. It contains numerous clusters, for viewing with binoculars and telescopes and a couple with the naked eye.

Probably the best open cluster in Scorpius is M6, a bright 4th magnitude cluster that can easily be seen with the naked eye. A pair of binoculars or a telescope on low magnification should give a fabulous view.

Next is M7, an open cluster of about 80 stars just below M6. It lies over a rich star field and so it is not quite so easy to distinguish the cluster stars from the background. Its size is about twice the diameter of the full Moon.

Next up is M4, a globular cluster just slightly dimmer at 6th magnitude. The stars in this cluster are best viewed with an 8 inch or bigger telescope on low magnification. The apparent size of the cluster is almost as big as the full Moon

Now finally onto M80, we have another globular cluster lying about 26000 light years away. It appears as a blobl of light in binoculars or small telescopes, so you had better view it with perhaps an 8 inch or bigger to resolve any stars.