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Sidereal Chart
Few people realize that the term Zodiac technically refers the path the sun appears to traveled as viewed from Earth. Modern astrological signs are longer in sync with the band of constellations the sun appears to travel through on its yearly journey. Not only were the timeframes for each of the houses were never equally distributed, the initial calculations used for those dates several centuries out of date.
Modern astrologers use the Tropical chart which was created by Claudius Ptolemaeus, better known in the west as Ptolemy, who wrote one of the most important texts on astrology called Tetrabiblos, almost 1,850 years ago. Since his calculations were published the Earth’s alignment has shifted by about 25 degrees, due to natural rotational cycle changes. These natural variations caused appearance of the constellations of the zodiac to out of sync with the modern calendar. These differences are compounded by changes in how we measure dates and time, such as the adoption of the Gregorian calendar.
The Sidereal chart was created by an Irish astrologer named Cyril Fagan in 1944, based on the current path of the sun through the actual constellations during his lifetime.
Below we present the Tropical, Sidereal, and Modern constellation dates for each sign. The precise dates of the signs in the Sidereal chart will vary slightly with constellations from year to year.
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Sign
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Tropical |
Sidereal |
Constellation |
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Aries
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March 21 - April 20 |
April 15 - May 15 |
April 19 - May 13 |
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Taurus
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April 21 - May 21 |
May 16 - June 15 |
May 14 - June 19 |
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Gemini
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May 22 - June 21 |
June 16 - July 15 |
June 20 - July 20 |
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Cancer
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June 22 - July 22 |
July 16 - August 15 |
July 21 - August 9 |
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Leo
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July 23 - August 21 |
August 16 - September 15 |
August 10 - September 15 |
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Virgo
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August 22 - September 23 |
September 16 - October 15 |
September 16 - October 30 |
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Libra
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September 24 - October 23 |
October 16 - November 15 |
October 31 - November 22 |
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Scorpio
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October 24 - November 22 |
November 16 - December 15 |
November 23 - December 17 |
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Sagittarius
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November 23 - December 22 |
December 16 - January 14 |
December 18 - January 18 |
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Capricorn
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December 23 - January 20 |
January 15 - February 14 |
January 19 - February 15 |
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Aquarius
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January 21 - February 19 |
February 15 - March 14 |
February 16 - March 11 |
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Pisces
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February 20 - March 20 |
March 15 - April 14 |
March 12 - April 18 |
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| A note on Ophiuchus: |
Some have suggested that modern astrology actually should include a 13th sign named Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer. This sign would have fallen between the constellations of Scorpio and Sagittarius, from November 30 - December 17.
History and modern politics cast some doubt on this assertion. Astronomers enjoyed naming constellations after themselves or favorite things. So much so that by the 19th century the night sky had become filled with constellation whose boundaries often overlapped. Many of the names of the constellations became even more contradictory as different schools of astronomy prepared their own versions of the star maps.
The International Astronomical Union sought to fix this problem in 1930 by standardizing astronomical charts worldwide. They negotiated the names and boundaries down to an official 88 constellations that completely covered the sky. The only reason that Ophiuchus falls into the zodiac band is that when astronomers redefined the constellation boundaries, it made the sun travel through a tiny part of the huge constellation. Astrology had long since separated from the more academic astronomy and is primary concerned with the original boundaries of the constellations which divided the zodiac into twelve houses, so changes in science of astronomy do not really impact the folklore of astrology.
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