Hey Guys, guess what?
There's a 13th Zodiac Sign, and I'm no longer a Cancer, I'm a Gemini XD
http://aquarianmysteries.com/ophiuchus2.html
http://domeofthesky.com/clicks/oph.html
http://www.eastbayastro.org/articles/lore/ophiuchus.htm
http://www.griffithobs.org/SkyOphiuchus.html
Here's some of the information below:
One tidbit of "astronomical" information that most people seem to know is their "sun sign." But few people know what it means. Fewer still know that it doesn't mean that at all, or at least that it hasn't for the past few thousand years.
If asked, most people would say that a "Gemini" is a person who was born when the sun was in front of the stars of the constellation Gemini the twins. That might have been true about 2,600 years ago, but it isn't today-for two reasons.
First, when the astrological sun sign system was set up more than two thousand years ago, the sun's path was divided into twelve equally spaced "signs," each 30 degrees wide, and these signs only approximately coincided with the constellations. Cancer, for example, is a small constellation, and Pisces is huge, but both are accorded onetwelfth of the sun's annual path. The constellation Cancer -- which is made of stars - never coincided exactly with the sign of Cancer -- which is a 30 degree wide zone along the sun's path. And each astronomer/astrologer had his own idea of where the constellation Cancer began and ended, and even of how many constellations there were.
Astronomers finally settled this nagging problem about 60 years ago when the international Astronomical Union said these are the official constellation boundaries, and published a set of specifications that reads like a surveyor's plot of irregular parcels of land. This, for example, is the true location of the constellation Cancer:
Trace along declination 7
http://aquarianmysteries.com/ophiuchus2.html
http://domeofthesky.com/clicks/oph.html
http://www.eastbayastro.org/articles/lore/ophiuchus.htm
http://www.griffithobs.org/SkyOphiuchus.html
Here's some of the information below:
One tidbit of "astronomical" information that most people seem to know is their "sun sign." But few people know what it means. Fewer still know that it doesn't mean that at all, or at least that it hasn't for the past few thousand years.
If asked, most people would say that a "Gemini" is a person who was born when the sun was in front of the stars of the constellation Gemini the twins. That might have been true about 2,600 years ago, but it isn't today-for two reasons.
First, when the astrological sun sign system was set up more than two thousand years ago, the sun's path was divided into twelve equally spaced "signs," each 30 degrees wide, and these signs only approximately coincided with the constellations. Cancer, for example, is a small constellation, and Pisces is huge, but both are accorded onetwelfth of the sun's annual path. The constellation Cancer -- which is made of stars - never coincided exactly with the sign of Cancer -- which is a 30 degree wide zone along the sun's path. And each astronomer/astrologer had his own idea of where the constellation Cancer began and ended, and even of how many constellations there were.
Astronomers finally settled this nagging problem about 60 years ago when the international Astronomical Union said these are the official constellation boundaries, and published a set of specifications that reads like a surveyor's plot of irregular parcels of land. This, for example, is the true location of the constellation Cancer:
Trace along declination 7