Antares

Meaning

Antares is the red star at the heart of Scorpius. Its Greek name means “rival of Ares”, the god the Romans called Mars, because its colour matches the red planet. Mars passes close to it every couple of years, and the two can then be compared side by side.

It is a red supergiant, hundreds of times wider than the Sun, some 550 light-years away. It shines at about magnitude 1, a little changeable. It lies about 4½° south of the ecliptic. Its degree was 9°45′ Sagittarius in 2000, and it moves forward about a degree in 72 years.

Ptolemy likens the bright stars in the Scorpion’s body to Mars and, to a lesser degree, Jupiter. Tradition reads Antares as intensity: courage, daring, strong passions and a will to go all the way. Jupiter’s share brings breadth and a taste for causes larger than oneself. The difficult side is rashness and a fight carried on too long.

In practice

• On the Sun or the Ascendant, Antares is read as a strong, direct presence and a readiness to take on hard challenges.
• On the Moon, it is read as deep feelings that need an honest outlet.
• On the Midheaven, tradition reads a public life of bold undertakings, where steadiness turns daring into lasting work.
• By sign, it stands in early Sagittarius in the tropical zodiac, though it belongs to the constellation Scorpius. A planet in late Scorpio does not meet it.

Across traditions

• Indian astrology places it in the nakshatra Jyeshtha, “the eldest”, ruled by Indra, king of the gods.
• Chinese astronomy calls it 心宿二 Xīnxiù’èr, the second star of the Heart lodge, and also 大火 Dàhuǒ, the Great Fire.
• Greek myth makes Scorpius the creature that killed the hunter Orion. The two were set on opposite sides of the sky: Orion sets as the Scorpion rises.
• The four royal stars. Modern books often call Antares, Aldebaran, Regulus and Fomalhaut the four royal stars, or watchers of the sky. They credit the idea to ancient Persia. The grouping is popular, but its ancient basis is debated. The four do lie roughly a quarter of the zodiac apart. Around 3000 BC, Aldebaran and Antares stood close to the equinoxes, Regulus and Fomalhaut within about ten degrees of the solstices.

Origin and history

Ptolemy’s Almagest lists Antares as the middle of the three bright stars in the Scorpion’s body, reddish in colour. In the Tetrabiblos he gives it a nature like Mars, with some of Jupiter. Medieval magic counted it among the fifteen Behenian stars, and Agrippa lists it in his De occulta philosophia. Vivian Robson, in 1923, gathered the old readings, which balance boldness and broad-mindedness against rashness.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune places Antares from the Swiss Ephemeris star catalogue, sefstars.txt, where it is Alpha Scorpii. Its position is the apparent one at the chart’s moment, with precession, nutation, aberration and the star’s own motion applied.

A body within 1° of Antares’s longitude counts as on it; latitude is not compared. The Stars part of the chart table lists every body, point and angle on the star except the lots, closest first. Without a birth time, a contact that may not hold all day is marked ~. On the wheel, Antares is an overlay turned on in the Bodies panel. Its mark names the closest of the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars or the four angles within 1°.

Correspondences