Your Zodiac/Sun Sign May Have Changed — But Don't Panic!!!

Hey there. Here at India, we invest a lot of meaning in the astrological sign we were born into — like, a lot a lot. Imagine our surprise (and okay, slight panic), when we got the bone-chilling news that NASA may have declared the date ranges by which we define the signs to be all wrong. Once we got over the initial shock, being the voracious stargazers that we are, we knew we needed to take a closer look.

In a blog post published back in January of this year, NASA reminded us that there are, in fact, 13 constellations in the original zodiac. It's just that 3,000 years ago, when they were drawing up a plan for the signs of the zodiac that would correspond with the months of year, the Babylonians already had a 12-month calendar — so they left poor Ophiuchus out. With that and the fact that the earth's axis no longer points in the same direction in mind, NASA explained that the signs as we know them have completely different date ranges now.

Here the "new" dates for all 13 signs:

Capricorn: January 21 - February 16

Aquarius: February 17 – March 11

Pisces: March 12 – April 18

Aries: April 19 – May 13

Taurus: May 14 – June 21

Gemini: June 22 – July 20

Cancer: July 21 – August 10

Leo: August 11 – September 16

Virgo: September 17 – October 30

Libra: October 31 – November 23

Scorpio: November 24 – November 29

Ophiuchus: November 30 – December 17

Sagittarius: December 18 – January 20

Now that you've caught your breath, here's a hard, painful truth: From the get-go, astrology was not intended as an exact science. And as NASA has shown, some of its most foundational values, like these very signs, can be challenged by astrology's hard-science counterpart, astronomy.

For those of you scrambling to know what to believe in anymore, it's completely up to you. Some astrologers add that the seasons play a role in determining the signs' dates, but it's really just a matter of whether you subscribe to the zodiac signs or their corresponding constellations.

Each person has a different relationship with their sign and horoscope — if they have one at all — so if you'd like this news from NASA to shatter your worldview, by all means, let it. But if you've already invested a fair share of personal meaning into the sign you've believed you were born under all along, that's fine, too.

Finally, it's important to keep in mind that this isn't the first time this has happened and it won't be the last — after all, in the next couple thousand years, the earth's axis will probably point in a slightly different direction all over again. Until then... start looking at your zodiac!!!