* Astronomy

Shaula, the second brightest star in Scorpius, is only half as far from Earth as the Hipparcos satellite indicated, say astronomers in Australia, America, and Europe. New interferometric observations show that Shaula's Hipparcos distance is off by several hundred light-years.

Shaula, or Lambda Scorpii, has an apparent magnitude of 1.62, making it the twenty-fifth brightest star in the night sky. It is triple, consisting of two blue B-type stars that orbit each other every 1,053 days, plus a much fainter T Tauri star--a precursor of a Sunlike star--that circles the brighter B-type star every 6 days. In the 1990s, the Hipparcos satellite measured a parallax that placed Shaula about 700 light-years from Earth.

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