Zodiac signs
The table shows when the Sun enters each zodiac sign this year, with the date and the exact time in your own time zone. For another year, such as the one you were born in, type it into the "Year" field. Check "Show more values" to add each sign's element, quality and polarity, plus the dates when the Sun actually stands in the real constellation.
Zodiac signs by date of birth
Your zodiac sign depends on your birthday. It's the sign the Sun was in on that day, which is why it's also called your Sun sign. These are the usual dates:
- Aries: March 21–April 20, fire
- Taurus: April 21–May 21, earth
- Gemini: May 22–June 21, air
- Cancer: June 22–July 22, water
- Leo: July 23–August 22, fire
- Virgo: August 23–September 22, earth
- Libra: September 23–October 23, air
- Scorpio: October 24–November 22, water
- Sagittarius: November 23–December 21, fire
- Capricorn: December 22–January 20, earth
- Aquarius: January 21–February 20, air
- Pisces: February 21–March 20, water
The list keeps the traditional dates you'll find in calendars and horoscope columns. The real changeover usually comes a day earlier, and for Pisces two or three days earlier. The table above gives the exact moment for any year.
Born on the cusp
The Sun doesn't change signs at the same hour every year. A calendar year has 365 days, but from one spring equinox to the next it takes 365 days and almost six hours. So the changeover slips about six hours later each year, and a leap year pulls it back again. The line between two signs can move by up to a day either way.
Is your birthday right on the line, say April 20 or November 22? Type your birth year into the "Year" field and compare the time of the changeover with your time of birth. If you were born before it, you still belong to the previous sign. You can't be half Aries and half Taurus, because the Sun is always in exactly one sign. The neighboring sign can still show up elsewhere in your chart, though: Mercury and Venus stay close to the Sun and often sit in the sign next door.
The times in the table are for the time zone you're in right now. If you were born somewhere else or simply want to be sure, work out your personal horoscope. From your date, time and place of birth it finds the Sun's position to the degree, along with your Moon and ascendant.
Signs and constellations
Signs and constellations share their names, but they aren't the same thing. The Western, or tropical, zodiac divides the Sun's path into twelve sections of 30° each and starts at the spring equinox. The moment the Sun enters Aries, spring begins in the Northern Hemisphere. That keeps the signs in step with the seasons: Cancer starts at the summer solstice, Libra at the fall equinox and Capricorn at the winter solstice.
The Earth's axis, however, slowly traces a circle like the axis of a spinning top. The spring point therefore drifts against the stars, by roughly 1° every 72 years. This is called precession. In two thousand years the spring point has moved by almost a whole sign. When the zodiac was laid out, spring began with the Sun in the constellation of Aries. Today the Sun stands in the constellation of Pisces at that moment.
The constellations also differ in size. The Sun spends more than six weeks crossing Virgo but only about a week in Scorpius. To see when the Sun really stands in front of each constellation, check "Show more values" in the table. Sidereal astrology counts the signs from the stars rather than from the spring point, but it still keeps them equal in size. We explain the difference in our article on sidereal and tropical astrology.
Ophiuchus, the 13th zodiac sign
The Sun's path also runs through a thirteenth constellation, Ophiuchus. It lies between Scorpius and Sagittarius, and the Sun is inside it from about the end of November to the middle of December (the table's extra values show the exact days). That's where the talk of a 13th sign comes from.
Astrology still works with twelve signs of 30° each, because the signs are divisions of the year, not pictures in the sky. Someone born on December 5 is still a Sagittarius. What's said about the constellation and the people born in its days is on our Ophiuchus page.
Elements and qualities
Every sign has an element and a quality. Fire (Aries, Leo, Sagittarius) brings courage and enthusiasm, earth (Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn) patience and a feel for practical things, air (Gemini, Libra, Aquarius) curiosity and an easy way with people, and water (Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces) feeling and intuition. The quality tells you how a sign acts: cardinal signs get things started, fixed signs see them through and mutable signs adapt to change. Fire and air signs are masculine, meaning active, while earth and water signs are feminine, meaning receptive. Each pairing of element and quality appears only once in the zodiac, which is why Aries and Leo differ even though both are fire. There's more on this in our guide to the structure of the zodiac.