Zodiac signs by datethe usual dates, and the dates each year actually had
Zodiac signs by date follow a twelve-range convention, Aries from about 20 March to Pisces ending at the next equinox. The boundaries are not fixed: each one moves by a day with the year and the time zone of the birth. The table below gives the usual dates and the dates in force in US Eastern time over 2021 to 2030.
The 12 zodiac signs by date
| Sign | Usual dates | US Eastern start, 2021–2030 (years) | Element | Ruler | Sun days |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aries | 20 March – 20 April | 20 Mar (8), 19 Mar (2) | Fire | Mars | 30.46 |
| Taurus | 20 April – 21 May | 19 Apr (8), 20 Apr (2) | Earth | Venus | 30.97 |
| Gemini | 21 May – 21 June | 20 May (8), 21 May (2) | Air | Mercury | 31.33 |
| Cancer | 21 June – 22 July | 20 Jun (5), 21 Jun (5) | Water | Moon | 31.45 |
| Leo | 22 July – 23 August | 22 Jul (10) | Fire | Sun | 31.29 |
| Virgo | 23 August – 22 September | 22 Aug (8), 23 Aug (2) | Earth | Mercury | 30.90 |
| Libra | 22 September – 23 October | 22 Sep (8), 23 Sep (2) | Air | Venus | 30.39 |
| Scorpio | 23 October – 22 November | 23 Oct (6), 22 Oct (4) | Water | Mars (modern: Pluto) | 29.90 |
| Sagittarius | 22 November – 21 December | 21 Nov (5), 22 Nov (5) | Fire | Jupiter | 29.55 |
| Capricorn | 21 December – 20 January | 21 Dec (10) | Earth | Saturn | 29.44 |
| Aquarius | 20 January – 18 February | 19 Jan (6), 20 Jan (4) | Air | Saturn (modern: Uranus) | 29.59 |
| Pisces | 18 February – 20 March | 18 Feb (10) | Water | Jupiter (modern: Neptune) | 29.96 |
Usual dates run from the day the Sun most often entered the sign in US Eastern time over 1951 to 2030 to the day it most often left, which is the next sign's first day; so a birthday on the second date can belong to either sign. Sun days are the average stay. Rulers are the traditional ones, with the modern planet in brackets. How these dates were computed.
Zodiac signs by month
Every month holds the end of one sign and the start of the next. The changeover column lists every date the new sign began on in US Eastern time over 1951 to 2030, with the usual one in brackets; each month page goes through all its days.
| Month | Signs | Changeover (US Eastern) |
|---|---|---|
| January | Capricorn, then Aquarius | 19 or 20 January (usually 20) |
| February | Aquarius, then Pisces | 18 or 19 February (usually 18) |
| March | Pisces, then Aries | 19, 20 or 21 March (usually 20) |
| April | Aries, then Taurus | 19 or 20 April (usually 20) |
| May | Taurus, then Gemini | 20 or 21 May (usually 21) |
| June | Gemini, then Cancer | 20, 21 or 22 June (usually 21) |
| July | Cancer, then Leo | 22 or 23 July (usually 22) |
| August | Leo, then Virgo | 22 or 23 August (usually 23) |
| September | Virgo, then Libra | 22 or 23 September (usually 22) |
| October | Libra, then Scorpio | 22, 23 or 24 October (usually 23) |
| November | Scorpio, then Sagittarius | 21 or 22 November (usually 22) |
| December | Sagittarius, then Capricorn | 21 or 22 December (usually 21) |
Zodiac dates by year, 1950 to 2030
Pick a year to see the minute the Sun entered each sign. These are the instants every sign page and month page on Shymea is built from. The UTC column is the one to convert if you were born somewhere else.
| Sign begins | UTC | US Eastern | UK | Sydney |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aquarius | 20 Jan, 01:45 | 19 Jan, 8:45 pm | 20 Jan, 1:45 am | 20 Jan, 12:45 pm |
| Pisces | 18 Feb, 15:52 | 18 Feb, 10:52 am | 18 Feb, 3:52 pm | 19 Feb, 2:52 am |
| Aries | 20 Mar, 14:46 | 20 Mar, 10:46 am | 20 Mar, 2:46 pm | 21 Mar, 1:46 am |
| Taurus | 20 Apr, 01:39 | 19 Apr, 9:39 pm | 20 Apr, 2:39 am | 20 Apr, 11:39 am |
| Gemini | 21 May, 00:37 | 20 May, 8:37 pm | 21 May, 1:37 am | 21 May, 10:37 am |
| Cancer | 21 Jun, 08:25 | 21 Jun, 4:25 am | 21 Jun, 9:25 am | 21 Jun, 6:25 pm |
| Leo | 22 Jul, 19:13 | 22 Jul, 3:13 pm | 22 Jul, 8:13 pm | 23 Jul, 5:13 am |
| Virgo | 23 Aug, 02:19 | 22 Aug, 10:19 pm | 23 Aug, 3:19 am | 23 Aug, 12:19 pm |
| Libra | 23 Sep, 00:05 | 22 Sep, 8:05 pm | 23 Sep, 1:05 am | 23 Sep, 10:05 am |
| Scorpio | 23 Oct, 09:38 | 23 Oct, 5:38 am | 23 Oct, 10:38 am | 23 Oct, 8:38 pm |
| Sagittarius | 22 Nov, 07:23 | 22 Nov, 2:23 am | 22 Nov, 7:23 am | 22 Nov, 6:23 pm |
| Capricorn | 21 Dec, 20:50 | 21 Dec, 3:50 pm | 21 Dec, 8:50 pm | 22 Dec, 7:50 am |
Download every ingress from 1950 to 2030 as CSV (UTC plus US Eastern, Central and Pacific, London and Sydney local time; CC BY 4.0, credit Shymea).
Why zodiac dates differ between websites
Three things move the boundaries, and most tables pick one answer without saying which. The first is rounding. The Sun reaches 0° of a sign at one instant, and that instant arrives about six hours later each year until a leap day pulls it back, so a boundary rotates through two calendar dates over every four-year cycle. A table that prints a single date is quoting one side of that cycle.
The second is time zone. Aquarius began on 19 January in US Eastern time in 21 of the 80 years from 1951 to 2030, in the UK in 7 and in Sydney in 0. Same instant, three answers. A British table and an American table can both be right for their own readers.
The third is the calendar itself. The Gregorian calendar skipped leap days in 1700, 1800 and 1900 and kept the one in 2000, so since 1900 every boundary has crept earlier. Leo began on 22 July in US Eastern time in 4 of the 10 years of the 1950s and in 10 of the 10 years 2021 to 2030; Pisces began on 18 February in 4 and 10 of the same decades. Dates written down in the middle of the last century are now often a day late for an American birth.
Some published ranges fit no recent year at all. A widely copied almanac table runs Aries to 20 April and Aquarius to 19 February, which would put the start of Taurus on 21 April and of Pisces on 20 February. Taurus began on 21 April in 0 of the 80 years in US Eastern time and in 0 in the UK; Pisces began on 20 February in 0 US Eastern years. Meanwhile Taurus began on 20 April in 41 of those years, so a table that keeps Aries to the end of 20 April files part of that day under the wrong sign about half the time.
What is my zodiac sign if I was born on a cusp?
You have one Sun sign. A cusp birthday is a day on which the Sun changed sign in some years, and on those days the answer depends on the minute you were born and the place, not on a blend of the two signs. Born before the ingress time, you belong to the earlier sign; after it, the later one. The zodiac sign calculator applies that rule to your date, time and birthplace, and each sign page has a table of what every cusp day was across 80 years in four time zones.
If you do not know your birth time, a cusp birthday is genuinely undecided, and no table can settle it. A free birth chart with even an approximate time usually does.
Signs, constellations, sidereal astrology and Ophiuchus
The signs of Western astrology are twelve equal 30° divisions of the year, counted from the March equinox. The constellations with the same names are star patterns of very different widths, and precession has carried them almost a full sign away from the equinox since the zodiac was set. In 2026 the Sun reached the stars of Aries on 19 April, nearly a month after the sign Aries began.
Sidereal astrology, the system most Indian astrologers use, measures the signs from the stars instead, so its dates run about three weeks behind the tropical ones. It is a separate tradition with its own rules. Shymea uses the tropical zodiac throughout.
Ophiuchus is a constellation the Sun crosses between Scorpius and Sagittarius, in 2026 from about 30 November to 18 December. It was never one of the signs, which is why periodic news stories about a thirteenth sign change nothing. The Scorpio page shows how briefly the Sun is in Scorpius, and the Sagittarius page covers the Ophiuchus story in full.
How common is each zodiac sign?
Signs are not equally common, partly because the Sun spends longer in the summer signs, when Earth is far from the Sun and moving slowly, and partly because more babies are born in late summer. Shymea's rarest zodiac signs study assigned 62,187,026 registered US births from 2000 to 2014 to the exact ingress instants:
| Rank | Sign | Share of US births | Sun days |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Leo | 8.96% | 31.29 |
| 2 | Virgo | 8.94% | 30.90 |
| 3 | Cancer | 8.84% | 31.45 |
| 4 | Gemini | 8.56% | 31.33 |
| 5 | Libra | 8.52% | 30.39 |
| 6 | Taurus | 8.29% | 30.97 |
| 7 | Scorpio | 8.19% | 29.90 |
| 8 | Aries | 8.14% | 30.46 |
| 9 | Pisces | 8.04% | 29.96 |
| 10 | Sagittarius | 7.95% | 29.55 |
| 11 | Aquarius | 7.93% | 29.59 |
| 12 | Capricorn | 7.63% | 29.44 |
How these dates were computed
Every date and time on Shymea's zodiac pages comes from one table: the instant the Sun's apparent geocentric longitude reaches each multiple of 30°, measured against the true equinox of date, for every year from 1950 to 2030. The positions come from NASA JPL's DE442 ephemeris through the Skyfield library. Each crossing is found on a daily grid, refined to a fraction of a second and rounded to the nearest minute, half a minute rounding up.
The table matches the US Naval Observatory's published equinox and solstice times for 2000, 2024, 2025 and 2026 to within 1 minute. Local times use the IANA time zone database, including the daylight saving rules each place used at the time, so a 1955 New York birth is converted with 1955's clocks. Counts of how often a boundary fell on each date use the 80 years 1951 to 2030.
The generator is web/scripts/zodiac/sun_ingress.py in Shymea's site code, and the full table is the CSV download above. Sun days are the time from one ingress to the next. Decans split each sign into three 10° sections, and their usual dates come from the same crossings.
Zodiac signs by date: common questions
- What is my zodiac sign by date?
- Find your birthday in the table at the top of this page. If it falls on the first or last day of a sign, the year and your birth time decide it, because the Sun changes sign at a different moment each year; the zodiac sign calculator works it out from your date, time and birthplace.
- Why do zodiac dates change?
- The Sun enters each sign about six hours later each year and jumps back a day in leap years, so the change can land on either of two calendar dates. Time zones add a further day of difference, and the Gregorian calendar has drifted every boundary earlier since 1900.
- Did the zodiac signs change in 2016?
- No. The 2016 story was about the constellations, including Ophiuchus, which the Sun crosses each year from about 30 November to 18 December. Western astrology uses the tropical signs, measured from the March equinox, and their dates did not move.
- What are the 2027 zodiac dates?
- The Sun enters Aquarius on 20 January 2027 at 07:30 UTC, Aries at the March equinox on 20 March 2027 at 20:25 UTC, Cancer at the June solstice on 21 June 2027 at 14:11 UTC, Libra on 23 September 2027 at 06:02 UTC and Capricorn on 22 December 2027 at 02:42 UTC. The year selector above has all twelve in UTC, US Eastern, UK and Sydney time.
- What is the rarest zodiac sign?
- Capricorn, at 7.63% of 62.2 million US births from 2000 to 2014, then Aquarius at 7.93%. Leo was the most common at 8.96%. The rarest zodiac signs study has the full ranking and the method.
- Is my star sign the same as my zodiac sign?
- Yes. Star sign and zodiac sign both mean the sign the Sun was in when you were born, usually called your Sun sign. Your Moon sign and rising sign are separate placements in the same chart.