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Egypt's first complete Zodiac was uncovered on the ceiling of the Temple of Esna in Luxor governorate during restoration work carried out by an Egyptian-German expedition...After five years of cleaning and restoration work, the joint Egyptian-German mission uncovered a bright and colourful astronomical representation of the ancient Egyptian night sky.The relief contains all the twelve Zodiac signs, the outer planets of Jupiter, Saturn and Mars, as well as depictions of the so-called seven arrows and constellations used by the ancient Egyptians in time measurement....these findings were not recorded by the temple's previous publication by late French Egyptologist Serge Sauneron, who...

If you look carefully into the night sky, you might see a star that wasn't visible last week. In the equatorial constellation of Ophiuchus, a star named RS Ophiuchi about 4,566 light-years away has just had an epic eruption. This nova was so bright that the star is now visible to the naked eye, at a magnitude of around 4.8 – a whopping seven magnitudes brighter than its usual 12th magnitude dimness. Novae are rare enough to spot at the best of times, but what makes this occasion so special is the rarity of the star. RS Ophiuchi is what...

Explanation: The universe is filled with galaxies. But to see them astronomers must look out beyond the stars of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. This colorful Hubble Space Telescopic portrait features spiral galaxy NGC 6384, about 80 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus. At that distance, NGC 6384 spans an estimated 150,000 light-years, while the Hubble close-up of the galaxy's central region is about 70,000 light-years wide. The sharp image shows details in the distant galaxy's blue star clusters and dust lanes along magnificent spiral arms, and a bright core dominated by yellowish starlight. Still,...

Also cataloged as Munich 15040 or LFT 1385, Barnard's Star was discovered in 1916 by E.E. Barnard to have the largest known proper motion of all stars, 10.29 arc seconds per year, by comparing photographic plates obtained in 1894 and 1916, and later tracing it back to 1888 in E. Pickering's plate archive. This star moves apparently fast between the background stars in Ophiuchus, needing only about 350 years for 1 degree, in almost exactly North direction (Burnham gives a position angle of 356 degrees). This star is the second nearest to our Solar System at 5.97 light years, only...

Explanation: Renown 18th century astronomer Charles Messier described this 9th entry in his famous astronomical catalog as "Nebula, without star, in the right leg of Ophiuchus ...". But Messier 9 (M9) does have stars, known to modern astronomers as a globular cluster of over 300,000 stars within a diameter of about 90 light-years. It lies some 25,000 light-years distant, near the central bulge of our Milky Way galaxy. This Hubble Space Telescope close-up resolves the dense swarm of stars across the cluster's central 25 light-years. At least twice the age of the Sun and deficient in heavy elements, the cluster...

WASHINGTON: All your horoscope predictions for the year 2011 are bound to be wrong. Why? Because the stars are not aligned as your astrologer thinks they are. All zodiac signs – Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius or Pisces – were originally based on the constellation the sun was in the day you were born. However, there is a major phenomenon that will disregard all this – the Earth wobbles, a phenomenon called precession. Over the 2,500 years or so since the zodiac was established, your sign has moved about a month relative to the...

Regardless how you feel about astrology itself, it's easy to demonstrate that the "news" is bunkum — a textbook product of what I call the Twitter Snowball Effect.

Did the Ancient Greeks and Native Americans Swap Starcharts? Author Ker Than I had a story on SPACE.com yesterday about a very cool discovery: a one-thousand year old petroglyph, or rock carving, that was found in Arizona and which might depict the supernova of 1006, or SN 1006. The carving is presumed to have been made an ancient group of Native Americans called the Hohokam. The researcher who made the discovery argues that symbols of a scorpion and stars on the petroglyph match the relative positions of SN 1006 to the constellation Scorpius when the star first exploded. Well, after...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 January 1 NGC 6960: The Witch's Broom Nebula Credit & Copyight: Loke Kun Tan (StarryScapes) Explanation: Ten thousand years ago, before the dawn of recorded human history, a new light must suddenly have appeared in the night sky and faded after a few weeks. Today we know this light was an exploding star and record the colorful expanding cloud as the Veil Nebula. Pictured above is the...

New radio wave observations are giving astronomers their closest look yet at the supermassive black hole believed to be lurking at the center of our galaxy. Reporting in the Sept. 4 Nature, a team has, for the first time, resolved features as small as the black hole’s event horizon — the gravitationally warped region from which nothing, not even light, can escape. “We have now entered a new era, one in which we can directly image structure at the event horizon of a black hole,” asserts Christopher Reynolds of the University of Maryland in College Park in a commentary accompanying...

Sept. 21, 2006: Almost every day, the great antennas of NASA's Deep Space Network turn to a blank patch of sky in the constellation Ophiuchus. Pointing at nothing, or so it seems, they invariably pick up a signal, faint but full of intelligence. The source is beyond Neptune, beyond Pluto, on the verge of the stars themselves. It's Voyager 1. The spacecraft left Earth in 1977 on a mission to visit Jupiter and Saturn. Almost 30 years later, with the gas giants long ago seen and done, Voyager 1 is still going and encountering some strange things....

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 November 8 NGC 6369: The Little Ghost Nebula Credit: Hubble Heritage Team, NASA Explanation: This pretty planetary nebula, cataloged as NGC 6369, was discovered by 18th century astronomer William Herschel as he used a telescope to explore the constellation Ophiuchus. Round and planet-shaped, the nebula is also relatively faint and has acquired the popular moniker of Little Ghost Nebula. Planetary nebulae in general are not at all...

<\img> Molecular Cloud Barnard 68 Credit: FORS Team, 8.2-meter VLT Antu, ESO Explanation: Where did all the stars go? What used to be considered a hole in the sky is now known to astronomers as a dark molecular cloud. Here, a high concentration of dust and molecular gas absorb practically all the visible light emitted from background stars. The eerily dark surroundings help make the interiors of molecular clouds some of the coldest and most isolated places in the universe. One of the most notable of these dark absorption nebulae is a cloud toward the constellation Ophiuchus known as...

NGC 6240: Merging Galaxies Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / STScI-ESA / S. Bush, et al. (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA) Explanation: NGC 6240 offers a rare glimpse of a cosmic catastrophe in its final throes. The titanic galaxy-galaxy collision is located a mere 400 million light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus. One of the brightest sources in the infrared sky, the merging galaxies spew distorted tidal tails of stars, gas, and dust and undergo frantic bursts of star formation. The two supermassive black holes in the original galactic cores will also coalesce into a single, even more massive black hole. Soon, only one...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 February 2 Molecular Cloud Barnard 68 Credit: FORS Team, 8.2-meter VLT Antu, ESO Explanation: Where did all the stars go? What used to be considered a hole in the sky is now known to astronomers as a dark molecular cloud. Here, a high concentration of dust and molecular gas absorb practically all the visible light emitted from background stars. The eerily dark surroundings help make the interiors...

Better check your horoscope – according to astronomers, your sign might not actually be your sign. Scientific star-gazers say the 12 Zodiac signs we have come to memorize as handily as our own birthdays are actually out of date by a few thousand years. In fact, there should actually be a 13th sign called Ophiuchus between Scorpio and Sagittarius, changing the dates of the other signs as well. “Precession has shifted our view of the stars significantly over a few thousand years, so the sun is no longer situated in front of certain star groupings on the astrologically appointed dates,”...

I've read a few things that it all may be a hoax, but as we all probably know by now there apparently is a new sign, I called it out...not that you wont be able to recognize it, ObamaCare is easier to read... Capricorn: Jan. 20 - Feb. 16 Aquarius: Feb. 16 - March 11 Pisces: March 11- April 18 Aries: April 18 - May 13 Taurus: May 13 - June 21 Gemini: June 21 - July 20 Cancer: July 20 - Aug. 10 Leo: Aug. 10 - Sept. 16 Virgo: Sept. 16 - Oct. 30 Libra: Oct. 30 -...

asheller writes "The Star Tribune tells us the zodiac signs have shifted. Earth's wobble has shifted the signs, a new one's been added and many of us have changed signs. Formally a Cancer, I've apparently been upgraded to Gemini and am now married to an Ophiuchus, a new sign. What's yor sign? The new Zodiac Chart is pretty interesting." Here are some priceless reactions to this celestial development. As long as the Chinese Zodiac is unaffected, I'll still be able to accurately judge people based on when they were born, so please indicate in comments your (new) sign and birth...

"This is the dawning of the Age of . . . Ophiuchus??" There's been a change in the cosmos, and count on DUmmieland to be on top of it! We get the news from outer space here in this THREAD, "What's your sign?" So let us boldly go where no sane person has gone before (save for LOUSY FREEPER TROLLS!!!) and gaze at the DUmmies gazing up at the heavens, in I Am Sirius Red, while the commentary of your Hubble guest correspondent, Charles Henrickson, whose only sign is the sign of the cross, is in the [brackets]: What's...

A Minnesota astronomer confirms what many have suspected: Your horoscope is quite possibly wrong. Earth's shifts on its axis over the past 3,000 years have changed the 12 zodiac signs. > Here's your new sign below: Capricorn: Jan. 20-Feb. 16 Aquarius: Feb. 16-March 11 Pisces: March 11-April 18 Aries: April 18-May 13 Taurus: May 13-June 21 Gemini: June 21-July 20 Cancer: July 20-Aug. 10 Leo: Aug. 10-Sept. 16 Virgo: Sept. 16-Oct. 30 Libra: Oct. 30-Nov. 23 Scorpio: Nov. 23-Nov. 29 Ophiuchus: Nov. 29-Dec. 17 Sagittarius: Dec. 17-Jan. 20 >