Missing Claws

Scorpius is missing its claws. The celestial scorpion has a curving body, a wide head, a bright heart, and a prominent stinger. But if you look at depictions in modern atlases, it doesn’t have claws. Those stars were stripped away to form part of Libra, the balance scales.
         Yet the stars that once represented the claws have maintained their arachnoid names. Zubeneschamali comes from an Arabic name that means “the northern claw.” And Zubenelgenubi is “the southern claw.”
         Zubeneschamali is the brighter of the two. It’s a single star about 185 light-years from Earth. The star probably is about 80 million years old, although the number could be off by a good bit in either direction. Either way, it’s only a tiny fraction the age of the Sun.
         The star is quite impressive. It’s about three and a half times the mass of the Sun, and about 130 times the Sun’s brightness. Because of its surface temperature, it shines white or blue­-white. Over the centuries, though, many