Lifestyle
Your Zodiac Sign Is 2,000 Years Out of Date
Whether you care about horoscopes or not, you probably know your zodiac sign. You’ve probably known it for most of your life.
Zodiac signs were originally based on the stars. But over thousands of years, our view of the stars has shifted. That means, if you account for this shift, your sign might not be what you think.
Below, we’ll tell you what it would be instead.
There are three reasons the zodiac signs no longer line up with the constellations they’re named after.
1. Earth’s wobble
The Earth wobbles like a top. A spinning top starts to wobble soon after it is set into motion. The Earth does the same thing, only more slowly.
It takes 26,000 years for the North pole to trace out a complete circle in the sky, pointing at different stars along the way. Scientists call this wobbling motion axial precession.
This wobble means that our view of the stars shifts by one degree every 72 years. Over centuries, this difference builds up.
And it’s not just the Northern stars that shift in our view because of Earth’s wobble, but all stars — including the zodiac constellations.
Take the spring equinox, usually around March 20, the first day of spring in the Northern hemisphere (and the start of the zodiac calendar in Western astrology).
This shift in our view of the stars was discovered by Hipparchus over 2,000 years ago. Since you can’t see stars during the day, he waited for a lunar eclipse — when the moon is directly opposite the sun — and used the moon’s position to work out where the sun was.
By comparing his measurement with earlier ones, he found that our view of the stars shifts by about one degree per century — not too far from modern measurements.
Today, Western astrology uses the tropical zodiac system, which is based on the positions of the stars more or less as they would have appeared to Hipparchus, and not as they appear today.
That means that the zodiac signs familiar to Americans are in sync not with the stars, but with the seasons: Aries starts on the first day of spring, even though the sun is now in front of Pisces then.
In contrast, the Indian system of astrology uses the sidereal zodiac, which accounts for Earth’s wobble and aligns zodiac signs to the stars.
While these two systems were initially aligned, they have been drifting apart ever since. Western astrologers are well aware of this mismatch, but they don’t see a problem with basing the signs on the stars as they were two millennia ago.
“Astrologers using the tropical zodiac are just using what they consider to be an equally valid system,” said Dorian Greenbaum, a historian of astrology who teaches at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David.
2. Constellations differ in size
The zodiac signs were created around 2,500 years ago by the Babylonians.
Their star catalogs listed at least 17 zodiac constellations. But they eventually simplified these into the 12 zodiac constellations we know today, each 30 degrees wide, as if slicing the sky into 12 equal slices.
But constellations aren’t really the same size. In 1928, astronomers divided the sky into 88 officially recognized constellations, each one shaped like its own puzzle piece.
Official constellations along the sun’s annual path
“They are not nice equal pieces,” said Stacy Palen, emeritus professor at Weber State University. “They’re like jagged shapes that are not symmetric in any way.”
Based on these boundaries, the sun spends more than twice as much time in front of Virgo as in front of Cancer. And it spends only a week in front of Scorpio — if you include Ophiuchus, that is.
Which brings us to the last reason the 12 signs don’t align with the zodiac constellations.
3. Ophiuchus
Ophiuchus is the 13th constellation along the sun’s path, according to astronomers. (It even has its own emoji: ⛎.) Ophiuchus means “serpent bearer” in Ancient Greek, and is usually depicted as a man holding a snake. If you squint, you can kind of see why.
So for people born during the sign of Scorpio 2,000 years ago, Ophiuchus was more likely behind the sun on their birthday. (And because of Earth’s wobble, most Sagittarians today were also born when Ophiuchus was behind the sun.)
We don’t really know why the Babylonians left out Ophiuchus from their zodiac signs. They may have originally had a different name for it. But historians believe that when Babylonians simplified their zodiac system, they wanted the 12 zodiac signs to match the 12 months of their calendar. Ophiuchus didn’t make the cut.
A ‘shape-shifter’
Astronomy and astrology have little in common today, and there’s no scientific basis to the idea that the movements of the stars and planets influence our future or our personalities. But the two disciplines started out as the same thing thousands of years ago.
“If you were an astronomer, you were also an astrologer,” Professor Greenbaum said.
The Babylonians viewed the planets as gods, and planetary motions as omens that could foretell the fortunes of kings and kingdoms. This motivated them to look for patterns in the sky.
Even by the 17th century, many astronomers were also practising astrologers. Johannes Kepler, who discovered how planets move in ellipses, probably learned astrology at college, and created horoscopes for friends and patrons. Galileo practiced astrology and sold horoscopes on the side.
“Their side hustle was to cast horoscopes for their rich patrons because that paid the bills,” said Tyler Nordgren, an astronomer and author.
Eventually, during the Enlightenment, astrology was divorced from astronomy and was no longer considered a legitimate science, Professor Greenbaum said.
“It was kicked out of the universities,” he said. “But there were still practitioners.”
Today, we understand the laws governing the motions of planets and stars well enough to send spacecraft to distant worlds, detect gravitational waves and take pictures of a black hole. At the same time, over a quarter of Americans believe that the positions of the stars and planets can affect their lives.
So why has belief in astrology endured, while other methods of divination like ornithomancy (finding omens in the behavior of birds) or tyromancy (fortune telling with a block of cheese) have drifted into obscurity?
“Astrology is a shape-shifter,” Professor Greenbaum said. “Astrology goes along with whatever’s in vogue and manages to survive.”
Because those constellations are behind the sun, they’re in the daytime sky, and so you can’t actually see them on those dates. You’ll need to wait until they’re in the night sky, about six months from the date you entered.
How we found your sign
Though the astrological zodiac calendar is well known, there are small ways ours may differ from other sources. To calculate your astrological zodiac sign, we divided the sun’s annual path across the sky (known as the ecliptic) into 12 equal divisions of 30 degrees, beginning with the March equinox, which marks the beginning of Aries. This is the tropical zodiac system, in which zodiac signs are aligned to the seasons.
To calculate the astronomical zodiac constellation behind the sun, we used the Astronomy Engine software library to locate the sun on every day of the year and determine the astronomical constellation behind it.
We based our zodiac calculations on the current year, and on the position of the sun at noon UTC every day. A more accurate calculation of your sign would involve knowing the exact time and year of your birth, and as a result our calculations may be off by a day or so. This primarily affects people whose birthdays are on the cusp between two signs, or between two constellations.
To create the 3D illustrations of the stars, we used a repository of celestial data for the 88 official constellations, and oriented these constellations based on Earth’s view of the stars on a given date.
The astronomical calculations account for precession (the slow wobble in Earth’s axis of rotation), nutation (a slight wiggle in the tilt of Earth’s axis), and the gradual drift of Earth’s elliptical orbit.
Our star maps do not account for the movement of individual stars through space, relative to each other, known as proper motion. This movement is typically so slow as to be minimal over centuries, but the positions of some of the stars in the Northern sky during the last ice age may be in slightly different locations than shown.
In our visualizations, we used the familiar names Scorpio and Capricorn instead of the official names for those constellations: Scorpius and Capricornus. The seasons we describe are for the Northern hemisphere. The Earth’s orbit around the sun is actually counterclockwise when viewed from above; we show it orbiting clockwise for illustrative purposes. The Earth and the sun are not to scale.
President Trump speaks at a rally kicking off the Great American State Fair last week, part of the anniversary celebrations organized by White House-backed group Freedom 250.
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Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
As America’s birthday celebrations kick into high gear, so too do criticisms of the preeminent national group organizing them, Freedom 250.
Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee published a 55-page report Thursday accusing the group of aiding President Trump in turning America’s milestone into a “hotbed of corruption and self-enrichment” through tactics that potentially amount to criminal fraud.
It’s titled “From Vanity to Insanity: How the White House Cheated the American People out of their 250th Birthday.”
Rep. Jared Huffman of California, the ranking Democrat on the committee, told NPR that the report was months in the making. It is based on interviews with unnamed whistleblowers, sworn Congressional testimony, internal Freedom 250 documents and other written responses.
“We put it all together to really tell the story … of how Donald Trump hijacked what should have been a unifying national celebration and repurposed it for his own interests,” Huffman said in a Zoom interview. “This was a team of operatives using the Freedom 250 shell company, but it was also Donald Trump himself telling them what to do.”
The White House referred a request for comment to Freedom 250, though Freedom 250 told NPR that it does not speak for the White House.
Freedom 250 is the public-private partnership behind some of the summer’s most high-profile anniversary events, including a UFC fight outside the White House in June, a controversial state fair on the National Mall, a July Fourth fireworks show opening with a Trump rally, and the “Patriot Games,” a high school athletic competition scheduled for August.
It was created via executive order last year, and describes itself as “the national, non-partisan organization leading the celebration of our Nation’s 250th birthday.” But it’s not the only one: Congress had created a nonpartisan commission called America250 for this same purpose in 2016.
Democratic critics and watchdog groups say Trump decided to forge ahead with his own group after unsuccessful attempts to pack America 250 with his allies. Freedom 250 was incorporated as an LLC in October 2025 under the National Park Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the National Park Service, whose board now includes a number of Trump loyalists, including Chris LaCivita, senior adviser on his 2024 campaign.
Visitors can buy Freedom 250 merchandise at the state fair on the National Mall.
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Thursday’s report describes Freedom 250 as “a shadow organization capable of infiltrating the celebrations and injecting America’s 250th with Trump’s extreme, partisan agenda.”
Several of its events, like the “Great American State Fair” and a prayer gathering on the National Mall, have been criticized for their sanitized presentation of history and overtly Christian bent. The report accuses the group of funding its programming through opaque and questionable avenues, including soliciting foreign funds, misleading donors and selling access to the president.
“Once you siphon off the funds and supplant the real bipartisan commission with this new entity and you declare it the main platform for our nation’s celebration, and you award all these shady contracts to your friends, you can do anything you want,” Huffman said. “And what these folks chose to do was to push a very divisive, very extreme and explicitly sectarian religious agenda into all these materials in our name, using our taxpayer dollars.”
Some of the accusations, if true, could be found to violate federal law. For example, the report alleges that the deception of donors who thought they were supporting America250 — but were actually given banking information for Freedom 250 — could constitute wire fraud.
Freedom 250 spokesperson Danielle Alvarez denied the report’s claims as “categorically false,” calling it a “partisan smear.”
“Congressional members should be ashamed they are spending countless hours fabricating a report instead of joining Americans in creating an absolutely beautiful celebration,” Alvarez wrote in a statement shared with NPR.
The report has not been adopted by the Natural Resources Committee, so does not reflect its official view. Republicans on the committee have so far refused to conduct any oversight on the issue, despite Democrats raising concerns at previous hearings. Republican ranking member Rep. Bruce Westerman did not respond to NPR’s request for comment.
Huffman said his team had tried for nearly a year to get information from Freedom 250, but faced “resistance and obstruction every step of the way.”
“I would hope that Freedom 250, if they claim that … there’s nothing to see here, open up your books,” he said. “Give us the documents that we’ve asked for, and the information we’ve asked for.”
Huffman said his investigation will continue well past July Fourth, especially if Democrats reclaim the House in this fall’s midterm elections. In that case, he didn’t rule out the possibility of subpoenas or criminal referrals if applicable.
Regardless, he believes more information and witnesses will come to light — and says a full accounting is critical to prevent such a playbook from being used again.
“We may not be able to undo the damage they’ve done to us and the national celebration,” Huffman said. “But we can do something very patriotic by reminding everyone that our government belongs to all of us, not to Donald Trump.”
What the report alleges
Trump also wants to commemorate the anniversary by building a 250-foot arch, a replica of which stands at the state fair.
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Alex Wroblewski/AFP via Getty Images
The report accuses Trump of long wanting to place himself at the center of the anniversary agenda. It points to events held on his birthdays — last year’s Army 250th parade and this year’s White House UFC fight — and longer-term projects like his plans to build a 250-foot-tall triumphal arch.
It alleges that when America250 resisted that vision, the Trump administration turned the National Park Foundation from a “beloved nonprofit into a presidential shell” by standing up Freedom 250 under its auspices.
It is not clear where that directive came from: Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, who serves as ex officio director of the foundation’s board, testified before Congress in May that he was “not aware of the final decision maker on Freedom 250.” That same month, he told CNN the organization is “run out of the White House.”
In any case, Freedom 250 emerged with more visibility and more federal funding than America250.
Alvarez, of Freedom 250, says it “stepped in to rescue our nation’s 250th birthday from years of wasted time, wasted money, and failed planning.” But the report argues it supplanted America250 “through a series of diversions and misrepresentations that drained the chartered Commission of the resources it needed to function.”
The report says Congress allocated $150 million in federal funds last year to the Interior Department for events celebrating the 250th anniversary, with the “understanding” that $100 million of that would go to America250. The group has only received $25 million, it says, citing unnamed sources.
A statement from Freedom 250 says no funds were specifically earmarked for one entity over the other, so “claims that federal funds were ‘diverted’ from America250 to Freedom250 are baseless.”
When asked for comment, America250 Chair Rosie Rios — who served as U.S. treasurer under President Obama — did not address the report. She said the organization “will continue to focus on the values-based programming approved by our bipartisan Commission” and is “supportive” of organizations planning events for the 250th.
The America250 logo is seen on a White House Christmas tree skirt in December. That group is less visible than Freedom 250, but is planning many community-based anniversary events and a concert in Los Angeles.
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The report alleges that Freedom 250 was advertised as an addition to America250 rather than as its replacement, creating confusion. For example, many of the performers who withdrew from a scheduled concert last month said they had falsely believed the event was nonpartisan (it was later rebranded as a Trump rally).
The report alleges that Freedom 250 capitalized on donors’ confusion in a way that potentially amounts to fraud.
“Donors who intended to support America250 were misled and apparently provided with Freedom 250’s banking information, meaning contributions solicited in the name of the nation’s nonpartisan birthday foundation were routed instead to the President’s substitute entity,” it reads.
Freedom 250 said in a statement that “every major sponsor received documentation identifying Freedom 250 as the recipient’s organization before funds were transferred, and donors were free to decline.”
Alan Zibel, a researcher with the progressive consumer advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen, called those allegations “very troubling.” He applauded House Democrats for looking into them, even though they don’t have subpoena power at the moment.
“They’ve given House Democrats, should they take the majority next year, months and months of investigative work to do,” he said. “And there are some pretty rich target opportunities.”
Many questions remain
The Freedom 250 logo is visible on fencing around the National Mall on Thursday.
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Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
The bigger-picture problem, critics say, is the lack of transparency throughout the entire process.
“All of these things have been so thoroughly conducted outside of public view,” said Toni Aguilar Rosenthal, a program director at the nonprofit Revolving Door Project. “But I think the House Dems’ report is an excellent extension of those sort of remaining questions that continue to plague just the entire situation and Freedom 250 organizationally.”
Aguilar Rosenthal co-authored a separate report on Freedom 250’s contracts and tactics, along with Zibel from Public Citizen.
Based on their analysis, Aguilar Rosenthal said of the more than $120 million in public funds funneled toward the anniversary celebrations, over $100 million has been “funneled” directly to projects, events and entities with ties to the Trump administration.
Some of those public contracts raise particular alarm among watchdogs. Federal contracts have directed tens of millions of dollars to a company called Event Strategies, Inc., which helped organize Trump’s infamous rally outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“They had a chance to do this in a bipartisan way or a way that wouldn’t enrich cronies, but they pretty clearly didn’t do that,” said Zibel. “I think that this is a follow-the-money situation that needs to be explored.”
Zibel says many companies — including major defense contractors and tech firms — that have donated to the 250th celebrations also rely on the government for contracts, funding and regulatory oversight. The report mentions that Freedom 250 circulated sponsorship packages culminating in a photo op with Trump, effectively selling access to the president.
Both reports raised questions about potential foreign influence. Alvarez, of Freedom 250, says it does not accept foreign donations.
But Keith Krach, a former Trump administration official who is the CEO of Freedom 250, appeared to solicit just that while speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, earlier this year, offering “toolkits for countries, states, companies, all of that.”
“What could be funner than marketing America, or really marketing freedom,” Krach said.
There is little visibility into the origins and destinations of donations in general, Aguilar Rosenthal says. Best case, they are still being used for some of America250’s original goals, she says. Worst case, she says, “public dollars and funds that have been earmarked for semiquincentennial celebrations are being used as a slush fund” for the administration and its political allies.
The report says the National Park Foundation’s donor structure “conceals the identities of those who give and the benefits they may be promised in return.” And at a congressional hearing in February, the foundation’s president and CEO, Jeff Reinbold, promised anonymity for any Freedom 250 donors who requested it (but said donations would otherwise be disclosed in the regular reporting process).
Huffman conceded that any anniversary celebration of this scale would merit scrutiny over spending and contracts. But he said if this had been organized by the bipartisan commission that Congress authorized — with representation from both parties to ask questions and do oversight — it would have been more transparent.
“There would have been public reporting,” he said, “because a publicly-created commission from Congress can’t hide behind the cloak of secrecy of an LLC.”
Swift has attended fashion’s biggest night, the Met Gala, a handful of times over the years. Perhaps no appearance was more memorable than 2016’s event where it was not her dress, but her hair that made an impact. Swift’s bleached platinum bob at the star-studded fund-raiser that year was part of a short-lived era known as “Bleachella” to some fans.
Some fans believe the 2016 event, which both Swift and her ex-boyfriend, the actor Joe Alwyn attended, is where the couple might have first encountered one another. A moment Swifties think the songstress referenced in “Dress,” singing “flashback when you met me, your buzz cut and my hair bleached,” a line that describes how both stars looked that night.
For her first time as host on “Saturday Night Live,” a then 19-year-old Swift arrived having already written the song she would sing as the opening monologue. Seth Meyers, the show’s head writer at the time, later recalled bringing Swift into Lorne Michaels’s office, where she performed a “perfect” musical monologue and noted it was better than what the show’s writers had concocted for her to deliver. Swift has served as host and musical guest on the sketch-comedy show over the years. She’s also made repeated cameo appearances, including appearing alongside Kerry Washington and Betty White in a “Californians” sketch in 2015 for the show’s 40th anniversary.
In 2023, Swift and Travis Kelce both made cameo appearances on the show. The same day, they were also spotted by tabloids holding hands in New York City, one of the earliest public glimpses of them as a couple.
The iconic arena in Midtown Manhattan will serve as the venue for a private, two-day event around the wedding of Swift and Kelce on July 2 and 3. The first event will reportedly be a smaller gathering of 100 people for a rehearsal dinner at the Infosys Theater, a venue inside the Garden, while as many as 1,000 guests are expected to arrive at the venue the next day for a larger celebration, with possible stage appearances. Swift has some history with the Garden, performing there several times over the years, as well as sitting courtside and cheering the Knicks to a win during a game earlier this summer.
Whenever the singer is spotted coming and going from the Greenwich Village recording studio — which was founded by Jimi Hendrix and has hosted icons like the Rolling Stones and Chuck Berry over the years — fans are immediately abuzz with whispers about new music. Swift has worked there with Jack Antonoff, her longtime collaborator, on albums including “Lover” and “Folklore,” as well as re-releases of her older albums.
Swift has been spotted plenty of times at this Italian hot spot in the West Village neighborhood of Manhattan, most recently in May, celebrating Lena Dunham’s 40th birthday. If you can’t get a table, try your hand at making their famed — and delicious — salad dressing.
For a period between 2016 and 2017, Swift rented a four-story townhouse in Manhattan’s West Village. The pad appears to have inspired her 2019 track “Cornelia Street” from the album “Lover.” It’s a road she’ll never walk again, at least according to her lyrics.
Fans still regularly visit the house, even though it has been nearly a decade since Swift inhabited the home, which has an indoor swimming pool. In 2023, some Swifties made pilgrimages to the location after news broke on her split with the actor Joe Alwyn, whose relationship fans believe to be the inspiration for many of the tracks on “Lover.”
Swift’s residence in the TriBeCa neighborhood of Manhattan has grown over the years. She initially bought two penthouses from the “The Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson in 2014. A fan who once visited the apartment recalled Swift’s father saying that when his daughter first viewed the place, the actor Ian McKellen, who had been living there, was sitting in the kitchen. She has since purchased several adjacent properties.
Fans have seen glimpses of the home on social media over the years and, more recently, watched Swift use a fire extinguisher to put out a small candle blaze in the kitchen in a video posted by Swift’s recent musical collaborator Gracie Abrams.
Good luck getting a table here if you are not Swift or Kelce. The upscale American restaurant in SoHo is known for comforting dishes like a French dip sandwich and an ice cream sundae, as well as its savory sour-cream-and-onion martini from the cocktail menu. Swift has visited several times — including outings with Gigi Hadid and Sabrina Carpenter.
In “Delicate,” Swift sings of an unnamed “dive bar on the East Side.” Swifties believe this dark speakeasy on East Seventh Street is that bar. Fans also believe the song was written about Swift’s ex-boyfriend, the actor Joe Alwyn. The pair broke up in 2023; later that year she met Kelce.
This exclusive, members-only club in Lower Manhattan is frequented by plenty of celebrities, including Swift. The club bans photography and videos, as well as members of the media, and patrons are barred from identifying others in the room on social media or to the press.
Still, even with the privacy rules, there have been plenty of posts and photos documenting Swift coming and going from Zero Bond. There was a visit in 2023 with the actor Miles Teller and his wife, Keleigh, as well as a recent celebratory evening with the Haim sisters in June after the group watched the Knicks win at Madison Square Garden in matching shirts. There have also been multiple visits with Kelce over the years.
Swift spent part of her 34th birthday celebration at this rustic American restaurant on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Wearing a black minidress bedazzled with a moon and stars — a nice nod to the visual themes of her “Midnights” era — she partied the night away at Freemans’ upstairs cocktail bar with guests including Jack Antonoff, Blake Lively, Zoë Kravitz, the Haim sisters, Sabrina Carpenter and her childhood best friend, Abigail Anderson Berard, who was immortalized in Swift’s song “Fifteen.” The pop star was also seen dining here with Gracie Abrams earlier that same year.
People line up for hours — yes, hours — to secure a spot at this restaurant in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn. The brick-oven pizza spot, which is B.Y.O.B. and cash only, is a favorite of pizza connoisseurs — though not those at The New York Times — and celebrities alike. (Its owner has said he does not accept reservations.) Beyoncé, Jay-Z, the Beckhams and, of course, Swift have all been seen dining here, though unclear if they had to sweat it out in the line like us mere mortals. Swift, who once sent her dad to hand out pizzas, though likely not from Lucali, to fans camping out in New York to watch her perform on “Good Morning America,” has shared meals here with famous friends including Blake Lively and Selena Gomez, as well as a date night with Kelce.
The Brooklyn neighborhood where, if Swiftie lyrical interpretations are to be trusted, Swift left a now-infamous scarf at the home of one Maggie Gyllenhaal around 2010. Swift was dating Gyllenhaal’s brother, Jake, at the time and their relationship is believed to have inspired Swift’s “All Too Well,” a 2012 heart-wrencher of a song beloved by many fans, which Rolling Stone once ranked as her best song. “You keep my old scarf from that very first week,” Swift sings. In 2017, Maggie Gyllenhaal told Andy Cohen on “Watch What Happens Live” that she was “in the dark about the scarf.”
Swift later released an updated, 10-minute version of the track in 2021. A red scarf featured prominently as a thematic motif in “All Too Well: The Short Film,” which Swift also released that same year.
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