Last week’s eclipse: in case you missed it.By Professor Todd Brown / Contributor

A long time ago, in a mall far, far away, my parents would let me browse through a pre-Barnes & Nobles bookstore while they went shopping. The store always seemed to be run by a generic-looking person that was about my twice my age at the time: a college freshman. For being of the obviously type that was not going to buy something, they were gracious and asked if they could help me. I would ask for the astronomy section and they immediately would guide me to the astrology section. I smiled and thanked them and when they wandered off, I quietly crept to the far right side of the store where I knew my books were. So began my days where astronomy and astrology were closely intertwined. Actually, it reflected history at large: the astrology “section” was browsed first by humanity and then came astronomy.

Back before the pyramids were nothing more than a foretelling of the future in someone’s tea leaves, there was astrology. People felt that they could see how things would unfold if they could watch the stars and those bright wanderers that we call planets. Currently in our skies, Jupiter and Venus are grouped closely together at sunrise. Should the townfolk prepare for famine? Are the Cubs going to the win the World Series? Maybe summer is coming in about four months. And it doesn’t stop there; you can dig deep and see how your life will unfold. Are you a person destined for riches, a natural leader or going to be a zookeeper? Most of what you need to know is in your Zodiac sign, so would say the astrologer.

But what the Zodiac is and how your sign is determined is a big mystery to most people of today even though horoscopes are featured in most newspapers. Most realize that the Zodiac has something to do with certain constellations; actually, a specific twelve. Some of the Zodiac constellations are bright but, out of the 88 recognized constellations today, only Scorpius and Taurus break the Top 25. For those born under Cancer or Virgo, good luck in finding your constellation. They are two of the dimmest constellations with few, if any, bright stars. Meanwhile, easily visible Orion and Cassiopeia are left out of the select group of twelve simply because, as a realtor would tell you, it is all about location, location, and location.

The Zodiac constellations are those that the path of the sun runs through, or comes very close to, during its yearly trek. Of course, the sun isn’t doing any moving. It is the earth that is traveling and our changing vantage point just makes it seem like the sun is slowly drifting through the background stars. There are twelve Zodiac signs and twelve months of the year so the sun should spend about 1 month in each sign if all goes according to Hoyle. As we know, it wouldn’t be life if it were that easy. Because the constellations vary in size, the sun varies in how much time it spends in each Zodiac constellation. It dawdles for 45 days in the Virgo area but makes up for time by speeding through Scorpius in a week. The constellation next to Scorpius is Ophiuchus and the sun takes about 18 days to go through it.

Despite this, Ophiuchus gets the shaft and is not a Zodiac sign. The sun might pass through it but it has somehow offended the Zodiac gods. The reason is easy to see on late summer nights. Scorpius is bright while Ophiuchus looks like a gaping hole in the sky with few noticeable stars. Technically, it is cheating but the opportunity was there to use Scorpius at the expense of Ophiuchus; bright and dazzling always wins over dull and dreary. Equally dim Cancer faired better in that the sun’s path ran right through it and there were no suitable bright constellations nearby to bump it off the Zodiac list.

People long ago knew how important the sun was and the making of the Zodiac band made sense so that the passage of time could be marked. If, long ago, some farmers had the similarly unusually warm weather we had early in January, they only need to see that the sun was in the wrong Zodiac constellation to know it was not time to start planting.

The position of the sun also determines your sign. The Zodiac constellation that the sun was in on the day that you were born is your sign. I was born in mid-November, so that makes me a Scorpio. The only problem is the sun is almost perfectly centered in the constellation Libra during mid-November. What happened? The problem is that the earth wobbles on its axis like a toy top, taking 24,000 years to return to its original orientation. Termed precession, this has the effect to slowly cause the apparent position of the sun to shift with the passing of the millennia. A thousand years ago, not quite when I was born, the sun was in Scorpius for mid-November. But it, like most things, has moved on.

Even though astrologists have “rules” regarding precession (which do vary among different camps), I interpret this as my Zeus-given right to choose my daily horoscope between Libra or Scorpio, whichever sounds better. But since your sign supposedly picks your personality, then I am partial to Scorpio. After a vast research lasting several moments on the Internet, I found that a Scorpio can be brave and intense. Although Scorpios can be sadistic, Libras can be lazy and gullible. Also, as a Scorpion, I am supposedly made to be a scientist. Libras are suited to be a motorcycle drag racer or sub captain. Libras also are good at making great personal wealth. This sounds great to me but as I currently have no such wealth then I guess this excludes me from the Libra group even more. Sarcasm (a supposed trait of every Scorpio in the world) aside, I feel sorry for my son because although he was born, technically, a Sagittarius, I know that the sun was in the non-Zodiac constellation of Ophiuchus. Does this mean he has no personality? No wonder my little three-year-old gets so moody!

Well, I definitely don’t have all the answers but the daily horoscope just doesn’t help me out. If they worked then there wouldn’t be any surprises in life. The New England Patriots’ Super Bowl performance, delayed air flights for next Thanksgiving, the Lottery winners for 2010 as well as my eventual checkout date from this world would have all been headlines years ago. Regardless to what my physics students may think about the upcoming exam, it isn’t always good to know the answer before the question is even asked. Life just doesn’t go according to Hoyle, nor your horoscope, thankfully.

What else is out there this week:

• Feb. 29: Leap Day to account for the fact that earth’s time to round the sun is NOT an even number of days.
• Mars and Orion high in the southern sky at 8 p.m. with Saturn in Leo rising in the east.
• The waning last quarter moon heads for New Moon on March 7.
  
  Professor Todd Brown teaches physics at Pitt-Greensburg. An avid astronomer, he contributes a weekly column to The Insider.