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Ophiuchus has always been the 13th sign?
Hi All,
Just for a laugh, I posted on facebook to try see if any of my friends are Ophiuchans.
Then I decided to try and show how axial precession had lead to Ophiuchus becoming an 'unofficial' part of the zodiac.
I wound CDC back to 2999BC which is as far as it will go while still showing solar system bodies and the ecliptic.
And...there's not much difference there. I've overlaid the two maps as best I can (the orientation changes so I had to photoshop it as best I could thought you can still see a bit of a double image).
I had always thought the story was that the precession of the poles means that the sun now spends a lot more time in Ophiuchus, whereas it didn't before. But looking at this, it spent maybe an extra day or two in Scorpio 5,000 years ago, but it has *always spent much more time in Ophiuchus.
It's not axial precession, it's Astrological oversight.
The one thing that *has changed quite significantly is the position of the sun at that time (the right hand sun is the one from 2999BC) But that doesn't change the amount of time it spends in different constellations.
Have I gotten this wrong? I was expecting a much more striking result.
Markus
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