49 Fun Facts About Libra

What object does the sign Libra represent?

Weighing scales are Libra's emblem: a beam with a pan hanging from each end, drawn in the sign's glyph as a bar resting on a baseline, the image of fairness and even-handedness.

Libra is unique among the zodiac signs because it is the only one represented by what?

An inanimate object stands for Libra alone; every other sign is an animal or a human or mythological figure, though some old star maps add a figure holding Libra's pans.

Libra is which sign in the order of the zodiac?

Libra is the 7th sign, opening the second half of the twelve-sign zodiac; its first point marks the autumn equinox, halfway round the wheel from the first point of the year.

Which planet rules Libra?

Venus rules Libra as well as Taurus, its two domiciles; the planet of harmony and partnership suits the sign of fairness and relationships.

Libra belongs to which element?

With Gemini and Aquarius it makes up the air triplicity, the signs of thought and communication.

What is Libra's modality?

Cardinal signs begin the seasons; Libra starts autumn in the northern hemisphere.

Which sign is opposite Libra on the zodiac wheel?

The two mark the equinoxes: Aries the spring one and Libra the autumn one.

Which planet is said to be exalted in Libra?

Saturn is exalted in Libra in traditional doctrine, the planet of judgement finding its best expression in the sign of fairness; the Sun, by contrast, is in its 'fall' there.

On average, the Sun is in the sign Libra between which dates?

The Sun occupies the sign Libra from about September 24 to October 22, the month after the autumn equinox; the tropical signs track the seasons rather than the constellations.

Astronomically, between which dates does the Sun actually pass through the constellation Libra?

The Sun crosses the constellation Libra from about October 31 to November 22, more than a month after the astrological sign, because precession has shifted the constellations against the calendar.

The scales of Libra are based on those held by which Greek personification of ancient sacred law?

Themis, a Titan and Zeus's second wife, personified divine law and order; her scales and sword became the model for modern statues of Lady Justice.

Which daughter of Zeus, one of the Horae, was the Greek personification of justice?

Dike, one of the Horae with her sisters Eirene and Eunomia, personified human justice; Greek poets told of her leaving the earth in disgust at mankind's wickedness to shine among the stars.

Which Roman emperor introduced the goddess of justice to the Roman pantheon?

Augustus introduced the cult of Iustitia to the Roman state; justice was one of the four virtues on the golden shield, the clipeus virtutis, that the Senate awarded him in 27 BC.

Weighing a dead person's heart against a feather was which ancient culture's judgement rite?

Egypt: in the Book of the Dead the jackal-headed Anubis weighs the heart against the feather of Ma'at, and a heavy heart is eaten by the monster Ammit.

Since roughly which century has Lady Justice commonly been shown wearing a blindfold?

The 16th century: the blindfold began as satire in the 1490s, mocking a Justice blind to the abuses before her, and was soon reread as impartiality.

The first known statue of a blindfolded Justice, from 1543, stands on a fountain in which city?

Bern's Gerechtigkeitsbrunnen, the Fountain of Justice, carries Hans Gieng's 1543 figure of a blindfolded Justice, the earliest known, sword raised above the old-town street.

According to the Roman writer Manilius, which professionals are born under Libra?

Judges, Manilius wrote in his Astronomica, are born under Libra, the sign that weighs life and death; he also called it the sign in which day and night are equal.

The Moon was said to be in Libra at the founding of which city?

Rome: Manilius wrote that the Moon stood in Libra when the city was founded, and the Romans read the sign as a good omen for their state.

Before it became the scales, the Greeks saw Libra's stars as part of which constellation?

The claws of Scorpius: Greek astronomers knew the area as Chelae, the Claws, with the creature's pincers reaching west across what is now Libra.

What does the name of Alpha Librae, Zubenelgenubi, mean in Arabic?

The southern claw is the meaning of Zubenelgenubi, from Arabic al-zubana al-janubiyya; Alpha Librae is a wide double star whose two components can be split with the naked eye.

Which star is the brightest in Libra?

Beta Librae (Zubeneschamali), at magnitude 2.6, just outshines Alpha Librae at 2.75; Bayer's letters do not always follow brightness.

Libra's brightest star is often described as showing what unusual tint?

It is a hot blue-white B-type star, and no one is quite sure why observers report a greenish cast.

Which red star did Eratosthenes say Libra's brightest star once outshone?

Ptolemy later called the two equal, so either Antares brightened or the Libra star is slightly variable.

Traditionally, which two stars represent the beam of the scales, with Gamma and Sigma as the pans?

Alpha and Beta Librae mark the two ends of the beam, with Gamma and Sigma hanging below as the pans; together the four stars form the quadrangle that identifies the constellation.

Until 1851 Sigma Librae (Brachium) carried a designation in which other constellation?

Scorpius: Bayer had labelled the star Gamma Scorpii even though it lies inside Libra's figure, and the designation Sigma Librae replaced it in 1851.

Delta Librae is what kind of variable star?

An Algol-type eclipsing binary: every 2 days and 8 hours a companion crosses in front of Delta Librae and dims it by a full magnitude, from 4.9 to 5.9.

Which red dwarf in Libra generated some of the first claims of potentially habitable exoplanets?

Gliese 581, a red dwarf in Libra, made headlines from 2007 with planets 'c', 'd' and 'g' touted as potentially habitable; 'c' proved too hot and 'd' and 'g' were later dismissed as stellar noise.

How far away is the red dwarf that hosts Libra's best-known planetary system?

The star lies about 20.5 light-years away, one of the nearer stars to the Sun, roughly two degrees north of Libra's brightest star.

The disputed planet 'g' in Libra's red-dwarf system was nicknamed what by one of its discoverers?

Zarmina's World was Steven Vogt's name for the planet, after his wife; he put the chances of life there at '100 percent', yet other teams could not find the planet at all.

When it was found in 2009, planet 'e' of Libra's red-dwarf system held what record?

Least massive exoplanet around a normal star was the title planet 'e' claimed in April 2009, with a minimum mass of just 1.9 Earths; only pulsar planets around a dead star were lighter.

Which biblical figure gives the ancient star HD 140283 its nickname?

Methuselah, the Genesis patriarch said to have lived 969 years, lends his name to HD 140283, a metal-poor subgiant only about 190 light-years away, racing past the Sun at high speed.

The 2013 Hubble-based estimate for HD 140283's age was about how many billion years?

About 14.5 billion years (14.46 give or take 0.8) was the 2013 Hubble-based figure, which awkwardly exceeded the 13.8-billion-year age of the universe, though the error bars overlapped.

Which globular cluster is Libra's one bright deep-sky object of that kind?

NGC 5897 is Libra's one notable globular cluster, a loose, sparse ball of stars roughly 40,000 light-years away, faint enough to need a moderate telescope.

Libra was known in Babylonian astronomy as MUL Zibanu, meaning what?

The balance: zibanitu is the Akkadian word for a weighing beam, and MUL Zibanu shows the Babylonians already saw these stars as a weighing instrument, long before Greek star lists saw them differently.

To which Babylonian god, patron of truth and justice, were the scales of Libra sacred?

Shamash was the sun god, and the association with fairness and law has stuck to Libra ever since.

In ancient Egypt, the three brightest stars of Libra formed a constellation seen as what?

A boat: the three brightest stars of Libra formed a constellation pictured as a boat, fitting a people who drew much of the sky as traffic on a heavenly Nile.

Whose Georgics pictured the Scorpion pulling in its pincers to make room for Caesar?

Virgil, in Georgics book one, pictures the burning Scorpion drawing in its arms so that Caesar may one day take a place in the sky between the Maiden and the Claws.

In which year did the autumn equinox, the 'First Point of Libra', leave that constellation?

Around 730 BC the autumn equinox point slid westward out of Libra under precession, which shifts the equinoxes one degree along the ecliptic every 72 years, so the 'First Point of Libra' has long been a misnomer.

Which Greek poet's line 'few conspicuous stars the Claws can boast' popularised the name Claws?

Aratus, in his Phaenomena of the third century BC, wrote of the Claws as a dim stretch of sky, and his poem, the most-read astronomy verse of antiquity, fixed the name Chelae in Greek usage.

Libra ranks where among the 88 constellations by size?

Libra is the 29th largest of the 88 constellations, covering 538 square degrees, about 1.3 percent of the sky, and has no first-magnitude stars.

What is the IAU three-letter abbreviation for Libra?

Lib is the three-letter code the International Astronomical Union adopted for Libra in 1922, when it standardised abbreviations for all 88 constellations.

The Roman libra was divided into how many unciae, the ancestor of the ounce?

12 unciae made a Roman libra of about 329 grams, so each uncia weighed roughly 27 grams; the modern pound, by contrast, has 16 ounces.

Which two constellations flank Libra in the zodiac?

Virgo and Scorpius flank Libra: the maiden lies to the west, where the Sun comes from, and the scorpion, which once claimed these stars, to the east.

The Titan goddess whose scales Libra represents was one of the twelve children of which primordial pair?

Gaia and Uranus, Earth and Sky, were the parents of the twelve Titans, the justice goddess among them; she was said to have held the Oracle of Delphi before Apollo.

In traditional zodiacal body lore, which part of the body does Libra rule?

Libra rules the kidneys: the medieval 'zodiac man' assigns each sign a body region from head to feet, and Libra's share is the lower back and kidneys.

What does Zubenelakrab, the traditional name of Gamma Librae, mean?

The scorpion's claw, from Arabic al-zubana al-aqrab, is the meaning of Zubenelakrab, Gamma Librae, an orange giant of magnitude 3.9 that once counted as part of the neighbouring creature.

Who redesignated the star formerly called Gamma Scorpii as Sigma Librae in 1851?

Benjamin A. Gould, the American astronomer who later catalogued the southern sky from Argentina, reassigned the star in 1851; properly named Brachium, it had long sat well inside Libra's figure.

In sidereal astrology, the Sun is considered to be in Libra between roughly which dates?

Sidereal astrology, which keeps the signs tied to the stars, places the Sun in Libra from about October 16 to November 15, roughly three weeks later than the tropical dates that start at the autumn equinox.

How many stars did Ptolemy catalogue in Libra among his 48 asterisms?

Ptolemy listed 17 stars in Libra in the Almagest; Tycho Brahe later recorded 10 and Johannes Hevelius 20.