Cancer

Cancer at a glance

Symbol

The Crab

Sun in Cancer

About 21 June to 22 July (exact times vary by year)

Element

Water

Modality

Cardinal

Ruled by

The Moon

Exaltation

Jupiter

Detriment

Saturn

Fall

Mars

Natural house

The 4th house

Opposite sign

Capricorn

Which stars make up Cancer?

Cancer is the faintest constellation of the zodiac. Its brightest star is only magnitude 3.5, and from a city you may not see it at all.

From a dark site, look for a soft glowing patch at its centre. That’s the Beehive Cluster, also called Praesepe, “the manger”, flanked by two stars the ancients called the donkeys, eating from it. When Galileo pointed his first telescope at it in 1610, the smudge broke into some forty stars.

Where does Cancer come from?

Babylonian astronomers called these dim stars AL.LUL, a word usually read as crab and sometimes as turtle. In Greek myth the crab was Karkinos, sent by the goddess Hera to nip at Heracles while he fought the many headed Hydra. Heracles crushed it under his foot, and Hera placed it in the sky as thanks for trying.

Cancer gave its name to a line on every globe. About two thousand years ago the Sun stood in Cancer at the June solstice, at its furthest point north, so that latitude became the Tropic of Cancer. Precession has since moved the solstice Sun into Taurus, but the name stuck.

The Beehive was known long before telescopes as a faint cloud, and ancient writers used it as a weather sign. If it vanished on a clear night, rain was said to be coming.

How does Cancer line up with the real sky?

There are three different versions of every sign. The Earth’s axis wobbles like a slowing spinning top, a full circle about every 25,800 years, and that drags the spring equinox west against the stars by about one degree every 72 years.

Western astrology stays locked to the seasons, Vedic astrology follows the stars, and the two are now 24.2° apart. Hali uses the tropical zodiac because it follows the seasons the signs were named for.

How often is Cancer rising?

The share of each day with Cancer on the Ascendant, and how long it takes to rise, at four latitudes. In London it is the 6th most common of the 12 rising signs.

Place	Share of the day	Time to rise
Equator	8.9%	129 min
Madrid	9.9%	142 min
London	10.5%	151 min
Reykjavík	12.8%	185 min

Find your rising sign

The rarest rising sign, city by city

How common is Cancer?

In US birth records from 1994 to 2014, 8.86% of babies were born under Cancer, about 89 in every 1,000. That makes Cancer number 3 of 12, where 1 is the most common.

See all 12 signs ranked

When is the Moon next in Cancer?

The Moon is next in Cancer from Thu 26 Nov 10:51 UTC until Sat 28 Nov 11:20 UTC.

The next full moon in Cancer is the Cold Moon, on Thursday 24 December 2026.

Where is the Moon today?

Sources and methods

Tropical and sidereal (Lahiri) dates for 2026 computed by Hali; constellation dates approximate, from IAU boundaries. Babylonian names follow the MUL.APIN star compendium.

Dignities follow Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, Book I. Our data is free to use under CC BY 4.0.