The origins of the zodiac go back approximately 2,500 years when the Babylonians separated the sky into 12 different sections. Not Sure What Your Zodiac Sign Is? Let Us Help It’s always been a part of the Sun’s path in the sky (called the ecliptic), but it’s largely been left out of astrology. In fact, we’ve known about it for thousands of years-according to The Guardian, the first recorded mention of Ophiuchus came in 300 BC.

But this is undeniably astronomy, not astrology, and it doesn’t affect your zodiac sign.įirst, the Ophiuchus constellation isn’t new. More recently, USA Today traced some 2020 headlines about the “13th zodiac sign” back to a viral Facebook post from a Virginia-based radio station.Īlthough Ophiuchus is not part of the zodiac, there is a teeny-tiny bit of truth in these viral stories: Ophiuchus is a constellation (although not a “new” one), and the appearance of the constellations in the sky has changed over time. A flurry of headlines were published in early 2016 after NASA published a (since-deleted) blog post on its children’s site, Space Place, showing where Ophiuchus would fall in the zodiac if astrologers decided to include it, while acknowledging that, well, they didn’t. According to Snopes, these stories have been circulating online since at least as far back as 2002 via various chain letters and viral blog posts.

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