What’s my zodiac sign? Sorting out the Ophiuchus confusion.
Are you having a sun-sign identity crisis? If so, you’re not the only one. Recent supposed revelations by an astronomer have left many pondering how they could go to sleep as a Libra, for example, and wake up a Virgo. How did this astrological shakeup begin? During an interview with the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune, Parke Kunkle – an astronomer with the Minnesota Planetarium Society – explained that the astrological signs no longer line up with the constellations. But that’s not really news. Astrologers have known that for centuries. It just isn’t relevant.
Here’s why it’s not relevant: Astrological signs are not determined by the constellations. The signs are actually governed by the movements of planets in our solar system – within 12 zones representing each of the 12 signs – between the earth and the sun. But most importantly, the tools of measurement within that framework are the equinoxes and the solstices. And that’s what Western – or Tropical – astrology is based on, and always has been. The stars themselves don’t really have anything to do with the signs – other than having lent their names to them.
To simplify or perhaps to complicate things further, here’s a bit of the history. Thousands of years ago the Babylonians watched the sky for a period of one year. During that time one of the many things they observed was that that the sun moves through only 13 of dozens of constellations. Since the superstitious Babylonians preferred the number 12 over 13, they based the zodiac on 12 signs representing the 12 constellations – even though the equinoxes and solstices are truly the source of astrological knowledge and not the constellations. Hence in the beginning, the constellations aligned with the Tropical division of the year. However the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun causes the earth to wobble on its axis, which threw off the alignment of the constellations and the Tropical zodiac over time. These are the “news” that again and again pops up almost every year when some astronomer who has no idea about even the basics of Western or Tropical astrology comes forward and claims that astrologers got it all wrong. That the constellations do not correspond to the dates at all and astrologers could not agree more, only it is completely irrelevant as you just learned.
To sum it all up, even though astrology is based in science, it was neatly packaged way back when in perhaps a more romantic framework. The science, and the foundation of Western astrology, however, remains the same. It’s all more complicated than that, of course, but for the purpose of explaining why the recent hoopla is more hoax than revelation, you simply need to know that NOTHING HAS CHANGED! Simply because the dates when sun is in various constellations has absolutely nothing to do with Western or Tropical astrology dates. The only thing they have in common is that sometime in the past they actually aligned and the names of the constellations were used for the astrological names.
So, if you were born under the sign of Pisces and your traits include a great imagination, a keen sense of intuition, a sympathetic nature, and selfless compassion, you are still all of those things. Rest assured that you have not suddenly been transformed into a fiercely independent, detached, and unpredictable Aquarius. From now on, if someone asks “what’s your sign,” you can embrace your place on the zodiac wheel with certainty!
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Read MoreIs there a new astrology sign – Ophiuchus?
Ok, we have received many inquiries from the DailyHoroscope App users lately regarding the question of the new “astrology” sign.
The Question
Lately some prominent news channels picked up a story about 13-th sign Ophiuchus and that due to various reasons (we don’t want to get into that) the dates for the zodiac are wrong and have to be changed/moved/recalculated.
The wave of confusion hit the Internet. Being developers of a very popular horoscope app for smart phones, we felt we have to step in with some sort of explanation not only for people who wrote us wondering about this but for everybody. We ask you to share this story on Twitter and Facebook (use the badges) so that we can put an end to the confusion.
The Answer
Short answer for those who are not interested in the details:
There is no new astrological sign. Astrology and Astronomy are completely different things. Astronomical interpretation of the boundaries of the constellations is in no way equivalent to Astrological interpretation.
Read MoreAdding tilting effect to DailyHoroscope for WP7
We also have added the tilt effect which was a breeze with the provided sample by Microsoft and this tilting effect is very, very nice! We even consider making a separate presentation of it on our blog, to show some really cool tilting effect it produces!
Have a look at it in the video:
Read MoreDailyHoroscope coming to Windows Phone 7 with its launch!
We are glad to let our users know that we already started working on a version of DailyHoroscope to run on the windows phone 7 and we will be launching with the first device, which should be really soon. The rumors are somewhere in October – meaning in just a few weeks!
Here’s the first stub we took, it’s not much but we are working on it and it is starting to take shape. We have to develop relying only on the simulator so far and we can only hope it will look and work the same on the actual devices.
Without further ado, here’s the short video for DailyHoroscope fans!
UPDATE: this was just an initial stub and we continue to work on the app and it should be much nicer when we launch. We have already added some UI niceties. You can see the result of adding screen transitions for DailyHorosocope.
Read MoreFBConnect for DailyHoroscope on Android
We have good news that we wanted to share with you as soon as possible. They say one image is worth thousand words, so here it is:
As many of you know, sharing to Facebook using the regular intent mechanism on Android is well, impossible because Facebook applications screwed up is not using the intent parameters properly. We are almost done with an explicit sharing option to Facebook to be available in the next update to the DailyHoroscope for Android.
Maybe by the end of the next week, who knows 
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