Below is a list of the constellations and the dates corresponding to each character. However, something important to note is that if someone is born on the “cusp” of two constellations, they can identify with multiple characteristics of different signs. For example, if someone is born on April 19, he or she may have some Aries traits and some Taurus traits because his birthday is on the edge of the constellations.
Latin names are standard English usage (except that “Capricorn” is used instead of “Capricorn”). With a mix of Indian, Iranian Hellenistic and other traditions mixed with Greek and Islamic astronomical knowledge, for example the work of Ptolemy and the Book of Fixed Stars by Al-Sufi. Knowledge of the influence that stars have on events on Earth was important in Islamic civilization. But in the “tropical zodiac,” the system used by Western astrologers, there are fixed sectors of the sky through which the movement of the sun, moon, and planets is tracked to create the basis of horoscopes. Astrology is a pseudoscience that interprets the supposed effect of celestial bodies on human existence.
The theory was that if astrological claims about the position of stars and dates of birth were true, individuals would have shared similar traits; they didn’t. In the 4th century BC, Babylonian astronomy and its system of celestial omens influenced the culture of ancient Read More Greece, as did the astronomy of Egypt in the late 2nd century BC. This resulted, contrary to the Mesopotamian tradition, in a strong focus on the birth chart of the individual and the creation of horoscopic astrology, using the Ascendant and the twelve houses.
Ptolemy clearly explained the theoretical basis of the western zodiac as a tropical coordinate system, with the zodiac aligned with the equinoxes and solstices, rather than the visible constellations with the same names as the constellations. The Sun makes a path in the sky every day that astronomers call the ecliptic. The ecliptic is the apparent path that the sun makes in the sky against the background of the stars. If you could see the stars during the day, you would see the sun pass in front of the background constellations. These background constellations that the sun seems to pass through during the year are called constellations zodiacs. The zodiac is a band around the sky that lies about nine degrees above and below the ecliptic.
In the 2nd century BC he wrote Tetrabiblos, which served as the basis for Western animal mastery. Because most of the constellations through which the ecliptic passes depict animals, the ancient Greeks called their area zōdiakos kyklos, “circle of animals”, or ta zōdia, “the small animals”. The size and number of constellations varied in ancient times and were determined only with the development of mathematical astronomy. The following list gives the constellations of the zodiac, with the dates of the sun’s passage through them at the time their boundaries were established.
The first official engraved version of a Babylonian compendium dates back to 86 B.C., but using modern astronomical techniques, an astronomer at Louisiana State University has dated the original observations to 1,370 B.C., about 100 years ago. The tablets record the day of the year when certain groups of stars, or constellations, appear in the sky at sunrise. These constellations are widely considered to be the forerunners of modern constellations. Babylonian art, however, shines with images of lions, scorpions, rams, and bulls, which go back much further and suggest a much earlier recognition of zodiac symbols. In recent years, new research has suggested that Lascaux’s paintings may contain prehistoric star charts. In 140 CE, Ptolemy published Tetrabiblos, one of the most famous astrology books ever written.
The exact date of the equinox varies from year to year, but it is always between March 19 and March 21. The result is the start date of Aries and therefore the start date of all other signs may change slightly from year to year. The following table of Western astrology gives an overview of the twelve distributions of the heavenly longitude with the Latin names. Length intervals are treated as closed for the first endpoint and open for the second, for example, 30° longitude is the first Taurus point, not part of Aries.