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Monday 16 September 2013

The Sun In Virgo

This morning was quite sunny, and something had happened between midnight and sunrise. The Sun had moved from Leo (all images from Heavens Above:

And into Virgo:

Notice the presence of the two inner planets - Mercury and Venus - in Virgo. These are going to be hard to see from northern temperate latitudes.

One thing we can consider is how long the Sun spends in the 13 constellations it passes through:

Constellation From To Days
Virgo 16 September 2013 31 October 2013 45
Libra 31 October 2013 23 November 2013 23
Scorpius 23 November 2013 29 November 2013 6
Ophiuchus 29 November 2013 18 December 2013 19
Sagittarius 18 December 2013 20 January 2014 33
Capricornus 20 January 2014 16 February 2014 27
Aquarius 16 February 2014 12 March 2014 24
Pisces 12 March 2014 19 April 2014 38
Aries 19 April 2014 14 May 2014 25
Taurus 14 May 2014 21 June 2014 38
Gemini 21 June 2014 21 July 2014 30
Cancer 21 July 2014 10 August 2014 20
Leo 10 August 2014 17 September 2014 38

You'll notice that this adds up to 366 days - the precise times will vary by about 6 hours from year-to-year.

What is obvious is that the Sun spends longer in Virgo than any other constellation. The constellations differ in size, and the only one bigger than Virgo is Hydra:

This is quite a long, straggling constellation - just look at the number of constellations surrounding it.

In terms of how long the Sun spends in a constellation, the joint runners-up to Virgo are Leo, Pisces:

and Taurus:

This doesn't automatically mean they are large constellations - Leo is the twelfth largest, Pisces the fourteenth and Taurus the seventeenth. However, they are smaller than the tenth largest, Aquarius:

and the eleventh largest, Ophiuchus:

The constellation the Sun spends the shortest amount of time in (and considering the British weather, it is possible some years we never see it when it's there), is Scorpius, the thirty-third largest:

Scorpius is actually larger than two other zodiacal constellations - the thirty-ninth largest, Aries:

and the fortieth largest, Capricornus:

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