… And I don’t mean just to pick up chicks at a bar, either!
When I go outside at night, I often want to look at where the moon is and sometimes I want to be able to find one of the planets. Unfortunately, planets don’t stay still, and unless I have a table to look up their exact position I won’t know where to look for them. Fortunately, planets can’t appear in just any old constellation in the sky – they can only appear in one of the constellations that lies along the Ecliptic.
So how do I remember which constellations lie along the ecliptic.
Simple. They’re the same constellations as the 12 signs of the Zodiac! Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpius, and Sagittarius. In that order. (Heck, that’s how the Zodiacal constellations were originally chosen by the ancient Babylonians or Greeks or whoever invented Astrology.) So if I want to see which constellations a planet might be in – or predict which constellation the moon will move into tomorrow night – all I have to do is pull up the Astrology Page of the newspaper or one of those Star Scrolls, and I’ll instantly have a list of the names of the constellations that lie along the Ecliptic.
Of course, this has the distinct disadvantage that if a woman in a bar tells me she’s a Virgo, I’ll turn around and ask, “Which one, Spica?”
Or you can call up one of the trillions of astronomy pages on the Net, and find out where the planets are going to be. Sorry, I wouldn’t use “newspaper” astrology. So far, their dates are two weeks out, and counting …
Well, yeah … but if all I want is the names of the constellations that lie along the ecliptic, then any old Astrology column will do just as nicely as a real astronomical reference.
And it’s a lot easier to find something astrology-related lying around handy, than it is to find something astronomy-related lying around handy. It also gives me an excuse to use that fake “this week’s horoscopes” page from The Onion or listen to Weird Al Yankovic’s “Your Horoscope For Today” again.
Another problem is that because of (I think) the procession of the equinoxes, when astrology tells you (for instance) that Saturn is in Aries, it’s really in Pisces. The places in the sky where the constellations are (relative to where the Sun crosses the ecliptic) have changed. So, at the moment of Spring Equinox, the astrologers say ‘that’s Aries.’ The astronomers say ‘That was Aries 2000 years ago, but time marches on, and it’s now Pisces. Feh.’ Also, part of Ophiuchus (sp) the Serpent Handler dips into the ecliptic, so you’ll occasionally see a planet in that constellation. Astrologers didn’t want there to be 13 signs in the zodiac so they sort of ignored Snake Guy.
The best way to learn constellations outside of living in the middle of nowhere North Dakota with a talkative astronomer is with the book below- it’s very good, and has planet-finding charts too:
Draco’s pretty far away from the ecliptic, actually, but I found out the other day that the Sun crosses through Cetus (the sea monster) for a few hours every March 27.
No idea where I got Draco from (maybe because it spans the north ecliptic pole, not the ecliptic itself). But in searching I found that there is a 13th constellation along the ecliptic that of Ophiuchus (the serpent bearer), s/b star sign for those born betwen Nov 30 and Dec 17.
Oh, sure, Ophiuchus and Cetus barge their way into the ecliptic now, but were they doing it 2000-3000 years ago when Astrology was invented? Huh? Hmm? Huh? (Hah, I guess I showed them, I guess I guess.)
BTW, when an astrologer says, “Saturn is in the house of Aries”, does he just mean “Saturn is now where the constellation of Aries was 2000 years ago” – or does he mean something even more convoluted, like “Saturn is now in the 1/12 of the Zodiac that kinda-sorta corresponded to the position of the constellation Aries 2000 years ago”?
Well, constellations were different back then. They didn’t have the exact territories mapped out like they do today. And also 13 was an icky number. 12 zodiac constellations made for easier pie graphs for the astrologers.
They probably wouldn’t say that. Houses are labeled by numbers (e.g. ‘when the Moon is in the seventh house’). The houses are based on the eastern horizon. The first house is the pie slice that sits right on the eastern horizon, and the rest are figured from there. So if you were born at sunrise, the Sun is in the first house. If you were born at sunset, it’s in the 7th house.
I guess some of them might refer to them by signs, where the first house corresponds to the first sign (Aries)- so if they said Saturn was in the first house, it probably means Saturn is on or near the eastern horizon.
As an aside, I remember reading somewhere that some time in the Middle Ages the Church was having none of that pagan astrology with lions and scorpions and whatall, so they renamed all the zodiac constellations with the names of apostles, and the rest of the constellations were other various saints. So, we could use pick-up lines like ‘I’m a St.Bartholomew. Are you a St.James the Lesser, baby?’
Of course they weren’t, but if (as according to your OP) you wish to identify planets in tonight’s sky, one would have to look at the constellations of the ecliptic today (including ophiuchus) and not of the ecliptic of the ancients.
So, then, the constellation that’s in the First House at the instant you’re born would be your “rising sign,” right? (Or should I say, “the constellation that would have been in the First House at the instant you were born, if the equinox hadn’t been precessing for the last 3000 years, would be your rising sign”? Damn, this is getting twisted.)
