Constellation
Aquarius
Aquarius is the zodiac constellation of the water bearer, a large faint figure pouring a stream down to the mouth of the southern fish. The Sun passes in front of it from about 16 February to 11 March.
The myth
Aquarius is a figure tipping water from a jar. In the Greek telling he is often Ganymede, a young man so admired that an eagle carried him up to Olympus to pour drinks for the gods. The stream he pours runs down the sky and ends at Fomalhaut, the mouth of the southern fish.
How to find it
Aquarius is large and faint. The easiest piece to spot is a small Y-shaped group of stars called the Water Jar. From there a loose, scattered trail of stars pours south toward the lone bright star Fomalhaut, sitting by itself in an otherwise empty patch of sky. Autumn evenings are the best time from the northern hemisphere.
When the Sun is there
Hali’s calculations with the official star boundaries put the Sun in front of Aquarius from about 16 February to 11 March in 2026, an average of 24.1 days a year. The sign Aquarius ran from 20 January to 18 February in 2026, so an Aquarius Sun spent nearly all of its sign in front of Capricornus, 27 of 29.6 days by Hali’s figures. People born under the sign Pisces had the Sun in front of Aquarius for 21.4 of their sign’s 30 days.
The water country
The Babylonians seem to have seen this whole region of sky as watery, and it is still full of wet names, the water bearer, the southern fish, the sea goat, the whale Cetus, the river Eridanus and the two fish of Pisces. One old suggestion is that the Sun passed through here during the rainy season of the ancient Near East.
Stars you can find in your chart
Sadalmelik, the water bearer’s shoulder, sits at 3 degrees of the sign Pisces in 2026 by Hali’s star positions, with Fomalhaut, at the end of his stream, beside it at 4 degrees of Pisces. The Sun passes both around 22 February. Sadalmelik is Arabic for the luck of the king.
Sign and constellation
Your Aquarius sign is a season-based slice of the zodiac, not this star pattern. See why your star sign is not a constellation. The Aquarius sign guide covers the sign, the Aquarius dates page lists when it starts each year, and the real sky tool shows which constellation was really behind your Sun.
Questions
When does the Age of Aquarius start?
Nobody agrees, which is part of the fun. An astrological age is named after the constellation behind the Sun at the March equinox, which is still Pisces. By the official boundaries the equinox will not cross into Aquarius for several more centuries, but because constellation edges are a modern convention, astrologers have proposed dates from the 1900s to well beyond 2500.
Sources: Standard references and Greek myth. Hali Sun in constellation times, 1950 to 2029, official IAU boundaries.