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13
Signs Of The Zodiac
Asclepius was a physician who was very skilled. Not one of his patients had ever died under his care. Hades the god of death was worried that Asclepius ability to keep people living might put him out of a job. He begged his brother Zeus to kill Asclepius. Zeus finally agreed. He struck Asclepius with a lightning bolt, Asclepius was dead, the most skilled physician of all time was dead. He was placed among stars to remind people how many lives he had saved when he was living, or so the myth goes. A long time ago snakes were referred to as a symbol of good health. Today Asclepius is represented as a physician with a snake lying across his hands. We refer to him as Ophiuchus the Serpent Holder, Ophiuchus being Greek for “serpent holder.” 
Click the map of the Zodiacal belt above to see a larger version of the image The zodiac is a strip of sky where the sun, moon and most planets are found. Any star atlas will show the zodiac divided into 13 constellations of various sizes. The 13th constellation is Ophiuchus, between Scorpius and Sagittarius. Besides these 13, there are 75 more constellations covering the rest of the sky. However, astrologers divide the zodiac into 12 equal parts, called signs. The zodiacal belt is the path that the sun follows as it moves around the Earth. As it moves it 'lights up' the 13 constellations. Many people don’t know about the thirteenth constellation, others (mostly astrologers) don’t want to include it, because it causes problems. Ophiuchus doesn't get included by astrologersbecause they think it is inconvenient to have 13 constellations/signs of the zodiac and only 12 months. There's also the problem that 13 doesn't divide equally into 360° of the Earths diameter. So how is your 'star sign' currently chosen? Well, way back when in the eons of astrological time, somebody recorded when each constellation/sign of the zodiac lit up. Let’s say you were born on June 22, then your birth sign would be Cancer the Crab because back then when the constellations/signs of the zodiac were recorded that’s which constellation/sign was lit up by the sun on June 22. Zodiacal constellations/signs do not stay in the sky for only one day. They stay in the sky for about a month. After years they will change. For instance this year on June 22 the constellation/sign that the sun lights up could be Libra, but people don’t go by that. They go by the first recordings of the zodiacal constellations/signs. When they were recorded people did not include Ophiuchus because it was an inconvenience to them, but it still had a date like all the others. Ophiuchus appears during the first half of December and about 1 in 20 people are really born under the sign of Ophiuchus. The 12 zodiac signs most people do know about don't match the actual positions of the constellations. The reason for this is that while the earth spins once in 24 hours, it also has other movements. Just like a spinning top, the earth has a slow wobble called precession as it spins. The wobble is really slow - taking 26,000 years to do one wobble. This causes the Zodiac constellations to drift through the sky. The Egyptian and Greek astrologers 4,000 years ago chose signs that more-or-less matched the constellations. But today, because of precession, the moving constellations have left the signs far behind. Today they are seriously out of step (by about 1 sign). Compare any astronomical star calendar with the zodiac one, and you'll see the following:
The
traditional linking of birthdays and birth-signs suggests the Sun spends
about 30 days crossing each of the 12 zodiacal constellations. Actually,
there is a lot of variation. Each year the Sun spends the most time
in Virgo (45 days) but only six days within the boundary of Scorpius.
So true "Scorpios" are definitely in the minority. And, as
noted, for those born in early December, the Sun spends some time within
Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer.
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