Virgo

The myth

Virgo is usually a goddess of the harvest, tied in different tellings to Demeter or to Astraea, the goddess of justice and the last immortal to leave the Earth as humankind turned cruel. She holds an ear of wheat, marked by the bright star Spica.

How to find it

Virgo is huge but mostly dim, with one clean standout star. Follow the curve of the Big Dipper’s handle down to the orange star Arcturus, then carry the same arc onward to a lone blue-white star. That is Spica, and the rest of the maiden spreads faintly around it. Spring and early summer 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 Virgo from about 16 September to 30 October in 2026, the longest stay of the year at an average of 44.5 days. The September equinox falls while the Sun is among these stars. In 2026 the sign Virgo ran from 23 August to 23 September, so a Virgo Sun was mostly in front of Leo. Every Libra Sun, by contrast, had the Sun in front of Virgo for the whole of its sign, 30.4 days by Hali’s figures.

Stars you can find in your chart

By Hali’s 2026 star positions, Vindemiatrix, the grape gatherer, sits at 10 degrees of the sign Libra and Spica at 24 degrees of Libra. The Sun passes Spica around 17 October each year. Spica also anchors the most widely used sidereal zodiac in Indian astrology, which places it at 0 degrees of Libra. The gap between that and its tropical position, about 24 degrees in 2026, is the offset between the two zodiacs.

Ptolemy gave Spica the nature of Venus with a little Mars, and it has a long reputation as one of the most fortunate stars in the sky.

A galaxy cluster in the maiden

Between Virgo and Leo lies the Virgo Cluster, more than a thousand galaxies gathered together, the heart of the larger group our own Milky Way belongs to. None of it is visible to the eye, but a modest telescope shows dozens of faint smudges, each one a galaxy.

Sign and constellation

Your Virgo sign is a season-based slice of the zodiac, not this star pattern. See why your star sign is not a constellation. The Virgo sign guide covers the sign, the Virgo dates page lists when it starts each year, and the sidereal versus tropical guide explains the two zodiacs.