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: