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Shaula Shaula, also known as Lambda Scorpii, second brightest star in the constellation Scorpio, the Scorpion. Shaulas name is derived from the Arabic phrase Al Shaulah, which means The Sting. This refers to Shaulas position at the tip of Scorpios tail, which is nearly 40 south of the celestial equatoran imaginary plane formed by projecting the earths equatorial plane into space. From June to September, Shaula is visible throughout the southern hemisphere and in the northern hemisphere up to about the latitude of the United States-Canada border.Stars that are visible to the unaided eye, such as Shaula, belong to the earths home galaxy, the Milky Way, and tend to be very bright or relatively close. Shaula is a very bright star with an intrinsic luminosity, or total light output, that rates an absolute magnitude of -3.52 (bright stars have low or even negative magnitude values). This magnitude corresponds to the light output of about 2100 suns. Shaula is about 330 light-years from the earth. For comparison, the most distant easily seen stars are up to 5000 light-years from the earth. At Shaulas distance, it shines in the earths night sky with an average apparent magnitude (a measure of how bright it appears to an observer on the earth) of +1.62, making it one of the 30 brightest stars as seen from the earth.Shaulas surface temperature is 20,000 C (36,000 F), which is more than three times the surface temperature of the sun and gives the star a blue-white color. Its diameter is about 14 million km (about 8.4 million mi), about ten times the diameter of the sun. Shaula is the brightest example of a rare type of variable star known as the Beta Canis Majoris stars. This class of stars is named after its prototypical starBeta Canis Majoris. Astronomers speculate that stars such as Beta Canis Majoris and Shaula have nearly depleted the hydrogen fuel in their cores, which causes them to become unstable and to pulsate rapidly.