Source:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41062376/ns/technology_and_science-science/If you look to your horoscope for a preview of your day, look again: You're probably following somebody else's supposed fate.
Thanks to Earth's wobble, astrological signs are, well, bunk. (Or even more bunk than you might expect.) Astrological signs are determined by the position of the sun relative to certain constellations on a person's day of birth. The problem is, the positions were determined more than 2,000 years ago. Nowadays, the stars have shifted in the night sky so much that horoscope signs are nearly a month off.
"Astrology tells us that the sun is in one position, whereas astronomy tells us it's in another position," said Joe Rao, SPACE.com's skywatching columnist and a lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium.
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What a scandal for the horoscope readers!!!! Do you think this could create a split between astrologists? Will we soon see debates between Old Calendar Astrologists and New Calendar Astrologists?
This isn't news. Hindu astrologers (as well as knowledgable Western astrologers) have known this for millennia. It's the result of the precession of the equinoxes. (Mispronounced by Brian Williams on NBC News last night as the "precision" of the equinoxes.
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In addition, in Western astrology (where the precession of the equinoxes isn't taken into account, and thus, Western astrology is more susceptible to astronomical critiques) one can still do good astrology by just ignoring what sign the sun, moon, and planets are in, and simply looking at the angular relationships of the celestial bodies (conjunctions, oppositions, trines, sextiles, etc.). Some suspect that the star of Bethlehem was a conjunction of Jupiter (the planet associated with spiritual kingship) with Regulus (one of the primary fixed stars, located in the constellation Leo -- Lion, the symbol of the tribe of Judah).
