Ophiuchus, the new sign of the zodiac?

The zodiac has been on trend in recent days after it was ensured that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, for its acronym in English) recognized Ophiuchus as the number 13 sign.

However, it must be remembered that this controversy is not recent and that this statement has been treated for several years, in addition to the fact that the North American public body has a different opinion from the one that has been treated on social networks.

“We see your comments about a zodiacal story that reappears every few years. No, we do not change the zodiac “, it was reported on his Twitter account in July last year, although this story has a bigger past.

What is the difference between astronomy and astrology?

It never hurts to remember that astronomy and astrology are two very different things, a fact that NASA itself pointed out through the blog in which it tries to explain what happened to Ofiuc.

Astrology is a set of beliefs in which celestial events have a meaning in human life, while astronomy is a science that studies the structure and composition of stars.

Both words have an etymology that comes from the Greek term aster, which means star, but in its second particle is the difference: one consists of logos (word, expression, treatise), while the other has nomes (rule, norm, order ).

Thus, astronomy and its scientists “know that stars many light-years away have no effect on the normal activities of humans on Earth,” the NASA report said.

We do not change any zodiac sign: NASA

What the National Aeronautics and Space Administration did was to do some calculations, but not to change a zodiac sign.

His report mentioned that the Babylonians invented the constellations 3,000 years ago, and they chose to omit the zodiac sign number 13, which would be between Scorpio and Sagittarius.

To explain what a constellation and a zodiac are, NASA invites you to do an exercise:

Imagine a straight line drawn from the Earth through the sun and into space far beyond our solar system, where the stars are. Then imagine the Earth following its orbit around the Sun. This imaginary line will rotate, pointing to different stars in a complete journey around the Sun or a year. It is said that all the stars that are next to the imaginary flat disk swept by this imaginary line are in the zodiac ”.

He also wrote that joining the points of the stars and using your imagination means that you can see shapes of objects, animals and people.

The Babylonians and Ophiuchus

As already mentioned, the Babylonians decided that the zodiac had 12 parts, thus choosing 12 constellations after they already had a 12-month calendar.

In this way, having 13 constellations, they initially chose to leave Ophiuchus and, despite this, some signs did not fit perfectly.

NASA indicated that, in addition, everything has changed, because after 3,000 years the sky has moved, because NASA’s axis of the Earth does not point in the same direction, causing the constellations to have different sizes and shapes.

“So I didn’t change any zodiac signs … I just did the calculations,” NASA said.

He added that of the 12 family constellations, the Sun also aligns with Ophiuchus for about 18 days a year.