ASTROLOGY & ASTRONOMY : UNDERSTANDING THE STARS IN COSMOS
Astronomy is the study of celestial objects and the universe as a whole. Astronomy is a phenomena! Astronomy has been existent since the old ages of Indian, Greek and Mayan civilisations. Only that the name was attached to it in modern times. Today people call relate Astronomy and Astrophysics a lot.
Astrology is the study of impact of the specific celestial objects on human being and earth on a whole. In astrology we study the movements and positions of certain celestial bodies. The word study refers to the impact that it has in human beings and terrestrial bodies. Astrology also dates back to millenniums behind our era.
“Astronomy is a wholistic approach to study the Universe on a whole. Astrology deals more specifically about impact on terrestrial bodies that certain celestial bodies, it's movements and positions can bring upon !”
Astronomy and Astrology are inseparable phenomenas of natural sciences.
Zodaic Sign:-
Maybe you associate the word ‘zodiac’ with astrology, but it has an honored place in astronomy, too. It’s defined by the annual path of the sun across our sky.
The zodiac, the 12 signs listed in a horoscope, is closely tied to how the Earth moves through the heavens. The signs are derived from the constellations that mark out the path on which the sun appears to travel over the course of a year. You might think that dates in a horoscope correspond to when the sun passes through each constellation. But they don’t, much of the time, because astrology and astronomy are different systems. Plus, a closer examination of the motion of the Earth, the sun, and the stars shows the zodiac to be more intricate than you might imagine!
As Earth orbits the sun, the sun appears to pass in front of different constellations. Much like the moon appears in a slightly different place in the sky each night, the location of the sun relative to distant background stars drifts in an easterly direction from day to day. It’s not that the sun is actually moving. Its motion is entirely an illusion, caused by Earth’s own motion around our star.
As the Earth orbits the sun, the sun appears to move against the background stars (red line). The constellations (green) through which the sun passes define the zodiac. Image via Tau’olunga/Wikipedia.
Over the course of a year, the sun appears to be in front of, or “in”, different constellations. One month, the sun appears in Gemini; the next month, in Cancer. The dates listed in the newspaper’s horoscope identify when the sun appears in a particular astrological sign. For example, March 21 through April 19 are set aside for the sign Aries. But your astrological sign doesn’t necessarily tell you what constellation the sun was in on the day you were born.
If only it were that simple!
To understand why constellations no longer align with their corresponding signs, we need to know a little bit more about how the Earth moves. And something about how we measure time.
Time is a fiendishly difficult thing to define, especially if we insist on using the sun and stars as a reference. Our calendar is, for better or worse, tied to the seasons. June 21 – the approximate date of summer solstice above the equator and the winter solstice below – marks the day the sun appears at its most northerly point in the sky. At the June solstice, the North Pole is most tilted towards the sun.
What makes this complicated is that the North Pole is not always pointing in the same direction relative to the backdrop stars. Our planet spins like a top. And like a top, the Earth also wobbles! A wobbling Earth makes the North Pole trace out a circle on the celestial sphere. The wobble is quite slow, requiring 26,000 years to go around once. But, as the years go by, the effect accumulates.
Tidal forces from the sun cause Earth’s axis to wobble over a 26,000-year period. The wobble changes where in Earth’s orbit the solstices and equinoxes occur. Image via NASA/Wikipedia.
Over the course of one orbit around the sun, the direction of the Earth’s axis drifts ever so slightly. This means that where along our orbit the solstice occurs also changes by a very small amount. The solstice actually occurs about 20 minutes earlier than one full trip in front of the backdrop stars!
Since we tie our calendar (and astrologers tie the signs) to the solstices and equinoxes, the Earth does not actually complete an entire orbit in one year. The seasonal or tropical year is actually a hair less time than one full orbit (sidereal year). This means that, each year, where the sun is relative to the stars on any given day – June 21, for example – drifts a very tiny amount.
But wait about 2,000 years, and the sun will be sitting in an entirely different constellation!
On the June solstice 2,000 years ago, the sun was sitting almost halfway between Gemini and Cancer. On this year’s June solstice, the sun will be sitting between Gemini and Taurus. In the year 4609, the June solstice point will pass out of the constellation Taurus and into the constellation Aries.
The signs more or less aligned with their corresponding constellations when the modern Western zodiac was defined about 2,000 years ago. But in the intervening centuries, the slow wobble of the Earth’s axis has caused the solstice and equinox points to shift roughly 30 degrees westward relative to the constellations. At present, signs and constellations are about one calendar month off. In another two thousand years or so, they’ll be about two months off.
To complicate matters more, the constellations – unlike the astrological signs – are not of equal size and shape. The stars that make up a constellation are not, for the most part, physically related. The constellations are just patterns that our ancestors saw as they gazed skyward and tried to make sense of it all. Today’s constellations are specific to ancient Greek culture. Most of them were introduced by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy in the second century A.D. (who in turn borrowed them from ancient Babylonian texts). Different cultures have seen patterns in the sky unique to their history. Some constellations are shared by many cultures (Orion is a notable example), but most are not.
Conception Regarding Astrology―
1.) Astrology reveals the will of the gods.
—Juvenal
2.) “Astrology is just a finger pointing at reality.”
—Steven Forrest
3.) “Astrology is one of the oldest and most accurate tools known to mankind.”
—Chris Flisher
4). “Astrology has no more useful function than this, to discover the inmost nature of a man and to bring it out into his consciousness, that he may fulfil it according to the law of light.”
—Aleister Crowley
5). “The way that I see astrology is as a repository of thought and psychology. A system we’ve created as a culture as way to make things mean things.”
—Eleanor Catton
6). “There is no better boat than a horoscope to help a man cross over the sea of life.”
—Varaha Mihira
7). “Though Astrology is like a deep ocean…anybody can get knowledge through going deeply in water and get some drops of nectar of this divine knowledge.”
—Onkarlal Sharma Prmad
—James Lendall Basford
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