Tag: astronomy

I’m using this blog post to talk about three common misconceptions/misunderstandings. These are very prevalent and I come across them what feels like every other week. If I don’t address this, for once, I’ll go crazy.

What’s Your Sign? No It’s Not

Whenever a girl begins with, “Do you know what my horoscope said?” you can answer confidently, “That you’re crazy.”

I guess that my love for astronomy and the skeptic in me combine for a really frustrated guy when it comes to astrology. I can’t even begin to count the ways how dumb it is. But the best part is, all these folks that think they know their signs, don’t.

There are many different branches of astrology and many that are much older, but the one that we use here in the States is what’s called “Western astrology”. This system of the twelve constellations came around the 2nd century AD. And in Western astrology, sometime ago, someone got lazy and stopped looking at the sky because the position of the stars had changed! It takes the earth 27,000 years to go through all 12 different zodiac signs. It’s substantial enough that no one really noticed that the position of the constellations changed, yet it’s small enough that the small change is noticeable after only a few hundred years.

There are a few people that use the correct form of Western astrology, called Sidereal astrology. However, most Americans use the out of date version, Tropical astrology.

So what is your real sign? The table below should clear that up. (more…)