The Fixed Stars

Lesath

Upsilon Scorpii

The sting, a name that reached us through a tangle of scholarly mistransmission. It stands at about 24° Sagittarius (tropical).

The sting's twin, riding so close to Shaula the pair are called the cat's eyes.

Lesath stands immediately beside Shaula at the tail's tip, and together the two determine the mansion of the sting; observers have long called the close pair the cat's eyes. Robson gives it the same Mercury and Mars nature as its partner, with the same hard reading of danger and keen edges, tempered here the same way, as sharpness that must be aimed with care. Allen traces the name itself through a chain of copying errors, a sting word arrived at almost by accident.

The etymology is genuinely tangled; Scaliger's conjecture from the Arabic for sting is the accepted account.