Libra. ♎︎

The scales are the only thing in the zodiac that was never alive, and for centuries Greece refused to see them at all. To Aratus and his readers these stars were the Chelae, the Claws of the Scorpion, reaching a full sign’s width beyond the beast itself. The scorpion, in the Greek sky, was simply enormous.

Rome cut the claws off. By Caesar’s century the Balance was official, a civic emblem rather than a monster’s hardware, sometimes set in the hand of the neighbouring maiden: Justice weighing at last. The star names never got the memo. The two brightest are still ‘the southern claw’ and ‘the northern claw’ in Arabic, a scorpion’s grip fossilised inside a courtroom prop.

The Romans were restoring, not inventing. Babylon had ZIB.BA.AN.NA, the Balance of Heaven, in this very place: when the zodiac was drawn, the autumn equinox stood here, day and night in equal pans. The scales predate the claws. Greece was the interruption.

A faint quadrangle between Virgo and Scorpius, best found from its neighbours. Its one party trick is Zubeneschamali, the northern claw, which generations of observers have sworn looks green, the only naked-eye star with that reputation. Photometry says it cannot be; eyes at the telescope keep filing the report anyway.

Sources: MUL.APIN I · Aratus, Phaenomena 89 · Ptolemy, Almagest VII · Hyginus, Astronomica 2.26