Scorpius is immersed in the Milky Way – the hazy band of light that outlines the disk of the Milky Way Galaxy. Because of that, the constellation is home to a dense variety of star clusters. Some of them are young, so they hold some especially bright stars.

Two examples are Messier 6 and 7.

M7 is the brighter of the two. Under dark skies, it’s fairly easy to see with the unaided eye. It’s about a thousand light-years away, and it contains hundreds of stars.

M7 appears to be about 200 million years old. At that age, all of its most-massive stars have long since blasted themselves to bits. That’s because heavy stars use up their nuclear fuel in a hurry. But the cluster still contains some stars that are a good bit bigger, brighter, and heavier than the Sun.

M6 may be just half as old as M7, so some of its stars are more impressive than any in M7. But astronomers have cataloged fewer stars there. And the cluster is hundreds of light-years farther than M7, so it’s harder to see – a faint family of stars in the Milky Way.

Look for the clusters quite low in the southern sky at nightfall. They’re to the upper left of the stars that form the “stinger” of the scorpion. M7 is about half way between the stinger and the “spout” of the teapot formed by the next-door constellation Sagittarius. Fainter M6 is a little higher in the sky. Both clusters are good targets for binoculars.

Script by Damond Benningfield