Antares in the birth chart: the red fixed star of Scorpius

Star data

sefstars catalogue, Swiss Ephemeris 2.10.03.

Antares is the red star of the constellation Scorpius and one of the four royal stars of astrological tradition. Its name compares it with Mars, and Ptolemy gave it a nature of Mars with a little Jupiter. Astrologers link it with intensity and a tendency toward extremes. In the tropical zodiac it stands in the first third of Sagittarius, almost exactly opposite Aldebaran.

In the sky

Antares is a red supergiant, and its reddish light is plain to the naked eye. In the figure of Scorpius it marks the heart of the Scorpion.

Antares lies close to the ecliptic, close enough for the Moon to pass in front of it from time to time. The same happens with Regulus, Aldebaran and Spica.

What kind of star it is

Antares is about 550 light-years away, although the exact figure is uncertain. It is one of the largest stars visible to the naked eye: its diameter is roughly 700 times the Sun's, more than three times the width of the Earth's orbit. Its mass is now about 12 times the Sun's; it probably started out with about 15 and has shed some three solar masses of gas over its life. The size makes the surface resolvable: in 2017 astronomers at the European Southern Observatory mapped the surface of Antares and the motion of gas in its atmosphere, the first such velocity map for any star other than the Sun.

Antares has a companion, a hot blue-white star of about fifth magnitude that is hard to see in the glare of the red primary. It was first reported in 1819 by Burg in Vienna, who caught it during an occultation by the Moon. Nineteenth-century observers described the pair as fiery red and emerald green, although the companion is in fact a hot blue-white star. Antares is in the late stages of its life, and ESO describes it as a star on the way to becoming a supernova.

Finding it from Ukraine

Antares is a star of summer evenings and is best seen in June and July. Scorpius is easy to recognise by its curved line of stars, and Antares is the red one at its heart. Each month the Moon passes nearby and can serve as a guide.

From Ukraine the star never rises high. At the latitude of Kyiv it reaches only about 13° above the southern horizon, in Odesa about 17°, so you need an open view to the south without buildings or trees. The Sun passes Antares at the beginning of December, and for some weeks around that date the star is not visible at all.

The name

Antares is Greek for "rival of Mars". The name points to the colour of the star, which resembles the colour of the planet. For astrologers the name works almost as a short description of the star's nature.

The form Antares comes from Ptolemy's star catalogue. Arabic astronomers called the star Qalb al-Aqrab, "the heart of the scorpion"; Allen thought this title probably older than its Greek and Latin equivalents, Kardia Skorpiou and Cor Scorpii. Mesopotamian inscriptions, as Allen reports, called it Kakkab Bir, "the vermilion star", again for its colour. Antares is the official name approved by the International Astronomical Union.

Nature according to Ptolemy

In the first book of the Tetrabiblos Ptolemy gives the bright star in the body of the Scorpion the nature of Mars, with something of Jupiter. Its nature is therefore mostly Mars, with Jupiter as a secondary note.

Mars stands for drive, combativeness, the wish to test oneself against resistance. Jupiter adds breadth and conviction: a sense that the effort serves something larger, a cause or a belief. Together they describe a strong push toward a goal held with real passion. Tradition reads Antares as the star of people who commit fully and take risks.

Medieval authors counted Antares among the heaviest stars of the sky, and that reputation is part of its history. Modern readings put the weight elsewhere: on the all-or-nothing quality of the star and its intensity. In Cornelius Agrippa's list of fifteen Behenian stars it appears thirteenth, as the Heart of the Scorpion, a counterpart to the Heart of the Lion, Regulus, which stands earlier in the same list.

The Scorpion and Orion

The best-known myth of the constellation explains a plain fact of the sky: Scorpius and Orion are never seen high at the same time. Aratus in the Phaenomena tells how the Scorpion wounded and killed the hunter Orion, and adds that men say Orion flees at the western edge of the sky whenever the Scorpion rises in the east. Ovid tells a version in the Fasti in which the Earth sends the scorpion. The two constellations do stand on opposite sides of the sky, the same opposition that puts Antares across the zodiac from Aldebaran, which lies not far from Orion.

Conjunctions with planets and angles

Antares is used by conjunction with a planet or an angle, within an orb of about 1°. Two examples show how the reading works:

• Antares on the MC. The angle of career and public life takes on the star's intensity: work pursued with total commitment, a willingness to take on difficult or risky tasks, and a public role tied to some form of struggle or defence of a cause.
• Antares with the Moon. The Moon describes emotional needs and instinctive reactions. With Antares they become strong and quick to flare, with a tendency to feel things fully or not at all. The Moon's sign and aspects show how far this goes.

Antares and Aldebaran

Antares in the first third of Sagittarius and Aldebaran in the first third of Gemini are very nearly 180° apart. A planet conjunct one of them stands opposite the other, so the two stars are often read as one axis. Aldebaran contributes pure Mars, steady and direct; Antares contributes Mars widened by Jupiter and pushed toward extremes. In this pair Antares is read as the more testing pole. Planets on this axis show where a person moves between measured effort and total commitment.

Precession and the sign

Like every star, Antares drifts slowly along the zodiac (precession). It belongs to the constellation Scorpius but has stood in the sign of Sagittarius for many centuries. Texts that place Antares "in Scorpio" use the constellation or a much older sky. When reading a chart, take the star's position for the year of birth.

In celebrity charts

Conjunctions within 1° to the planets from the Sun to Saturn and to the chart angles.

• Oleksandr Usyk: Venus, orb 0°17′
• Marion Cotillard: IC, orb 0°24′

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