passage through the ecliptic
- Silicon (Wikipedia)
Silicon is a chemical element; it has symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic luster, and is a tetravalent metalloid and semiconductor. It is a member of group 14 in the periodic table: carbon is above it; and germanium, tin, lead, and flerovium are below it. It is relatively unreactive. Silicon is a significant element that is essential for several physiological and metabolic processes in plants. Silicon is widely regarded as the predominant semiconductor material due to its versatile applications in various electrical devices such as transistors, solar cells, integrated circuits, and others. These may be due to its significant band gap, expansive optical transmission range, extensive absorption spectrum, surface roughening, and effective anti-reflection coating.
- Star Tales - Scorpius (ianridpath.com)
‘There is a certain place where the scorpion with his tail and curving claws sprawls across two signs of the zodiac’, wrote Ovid in his Metamorphoses. He was referring to the ancient Greek version of Scorpius, which was much larger than the constellation we know today. The Greek scorpion was in two halves: one half, called Σκορπίος (Skorpios), contained its body and sting, while the front half comprised the claws. The Greeks called this front half Χηλαί (Chelae), which means ‘claws’. In the first century BC the Romans made the claws into a separate constellation, Libra, the balance.
- Scorpius (Wikipedia)
Scorpius is a zodiac constellation located in the Southern celestial hemisphere, where it sits near the center of the Milky Way, between Libra to the west and Sagittarius to the east. Scorpius is an ancient constellation that pre-dates the Greeks; it is one of the 48 constellations identified by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy in the second century. Its old astronomical symbol is ♏︎.
