Two days ago, I was extremely confused when a friend texted me late night saying that I am no longer a Sagittarius. I then obviously looked it up and I was kind of relieved to find out that the rumours aren’t exactly true.
Rumours of a change in Zodiac have apparently been around for quite a while and suddenly hit mainstream media once again. They said that NASA was not only adding another sign, but also altering the dates for all current ones. However, the only official statement released but the space agency is a blunt “NASA studies astronomy not astrology”.
Indeed, astrology separated from astronomy sometime during the ‘Scientific Revolution’ (which in turn took place during the ‘Age of Rationalism’) that took place around the 17th century. Since then the two took separate paths with astronomy being the scientific study of everything in outer space and astrology being predictions based on everything in outer space.
There is no rational and scientific explanation for how those predictions or horoscopes, as they are called, work and therefore they are largely considered ….well, just predictions. However, I find horoscopes eerily accurate (and I suppose that so do others) and I think that it might have to do with the energy that connects everything in the universe, but that is a topic for another time. There is something fishy about all this; please agree with me on this at least.
Well, back to science abandoning astrology in the 17th century. Suddenly, here we are in 2016 with astronomers and space agencies suddenly telling us that the zodiac has changed because stars have moved since the zodiac was made 2000 years ago. And characteristics and dates of a new sign, Ophiuchus, are suddenly all over the internet. It’s no wonder that people are struggling to make sense of it. Since when did NASA start writing horoscopes?
Ophiuchus (image from themindunleashed.org)
This shouldn’t freak out or actually bother anyone for two reasons. First, NASA’s official statement mentioned earlier apparently denies all such claims and they are clearly not the ones spreading characteristics and dates. Second, while the constellation Ophiucus always existed, it has nothing to do with Zodiac signs.
Let’s see why.
It all started thousands of years ago when people didn’t really understand the movement of the sun, stars and the Earth. They didn’t know that the universe was so vast and that it worked in such a complex way. However, they observed the sky and tried to make sense of it. They thought that constellations told stories of their gods and that changes in their positions affected people on earth.
When the ancient Babylonians came up with the zodiac about 3000 years ago, they did so by dividing the year into 12 parts and corresponding each with the loosely aligned at that time 12 constellations (which made sense because the Babylonians already had a 12-month calendar but the division is not accurate because some constellations are larger so the sun spent longer in them). Some legends say that they already recognised 13 constellations for their Zodiac (others say they recognised between 17 and 24) but it did not align so they chose one to leave out – Ophiuchus.
Fast forward 3000 years and the Zodiac signs are not aligned with constellations anymore because of a phenomenon called ‘precession’. The positions of the stars and constellations shift by 1 degree every 72 years due to wobbling in the Earth’s axis. (Precession, for the record, was discovered by Hipparchus in 127 BC)
In the 2nd century AD, Ptolemy (a historical figure) made precession popular and made it clear that it doesn’t really affect the Zodiac the Greeks (Ptolemy was a Greek) were using because it was ‘tropical coordinate system’. (That’s where the Tropical Zodiac used today by the Western Astrology came from.) The Cardinal (meaning first) signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn) are to always stay aligned with the equinoxes and solstices, which is also the start of each season. This allowed the Zodiac to be evenly distributed and centered around Earth’s relationship to its Sun.
Cardinal signs are aligned with the solstices and equinoxes. (Image from collective-evolution.com)
Sun aligns with constellations (Image from spaceplace.nasa.gov)
In other words, today’s Zodiac has nothing to do with which constellation the sun is at that moment and their positions. The thing is that Ophiuchus is a constellation and not a Zodiac sign so it doesn’t really matter. The sun passes through a number of constellations during the year but the Zodiac signs are different at those times. So a person born on May 31st for example, would have Gemini as their Zodiac sign but would actually be born under the constellation Taurus. Makes sense?
Anyways, let’s now get down to the source of the rumour. It happened to spread because some people and websites misunderstood NASA’s explanation of the Zodiac on its SpacePlace page as a proposal to change it (I have no idea how it might have happened) and from there the rumour took on a life of its own and your’s truly happened to hear it.
Scientific Evaluation 