It is fairly faint, with no first magnitude stars, and lies between Virgo to the west and Scorpius to the east.

Traditionally, Alpha and Beta Librae are considered to represent the scales' balance beam, while Gamma and Sigma are the weighing pans.

[3] Iota Librae is a complex multiple star, 377 light-years from Earth, with both optical and true binary components in it.

Mu Librae is a binary star divisible in medium-aperture amateur telescopes, 235 light-years from Earth.

Shell stars, like Pleione and Gamma Cassiopeiae, are blue supergiants with irregular variations caused by their abnormally high speed of rotation.

Libra was known in Babylonian astronomy as MUL Zibanu (the "scales" or "balance"), or alternatively as the Claws of the Scorpion.

The scales were held sacred to the sun god Shamash, who was also the patron of truth and justice.

It has also been suggested that the scales are an allusion to the fact that when the sun entered this part of the ecliptic at the autumnal equinox, the days and nights are equal.

[6] It only became a constellation in ancient Rome, when it began to represent the scales held by Astraea, the goddess of justice, associated with Virgo in the Greek mythology.

[8] The official constellation boundaries, as set by Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of 12 segments (illustrated in infobox).

[12] At the time of its discovery in 2009, Gliese 581e was the smallest mass exoplanet known orbiting a normal star.