Dooood! I Shot Scorpius!

On Thursday night, our first at Lucia Lodge in the village of Lucia on the coast, Susan and I marveled not only at the full moon that had risen above the Santa Lucia Mountains at the exact time the sun set over the seas to the west, but also the fact that one of my favorite constellations — Scorpius — was fully visible in the south-by-southwestern skies.

So of course after dinner, I had to set up the tripod and pretend I knew what the hell I was doing in taking timed exposures of the moonlight cabins, coastline and waterscape, but it wasn’t until I offloaded images today that not unlike an amateur fisherman lucking into landing the big one on his first cast, I’d pointed the cam in the right direction and hauled Scorpius in all its glory from out of the inky blackness, see (click for the bigger picture):

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Uh Scorpius? Where? Here, maybe this connect-the-stars will help (click for the bigger picture):

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You know the mythology right? Scorpius is the creatures that killed Orion the Hunter, sent to do so by Artemis, the Goddess of the Earth, after Orion bragged that he could kill any animal on the planet that he wanted to. After he died from the scorpion’s sting Artemis put him among the stars where the scorpion still stalks him. Lucky for Orion he stays just out of reach. By the time Scorpius rises in the early summer, Orion’s already booked it below the western horizon.