Libra

Libra at a glance

Symbol

The Scales

Sun in Libra

About 23 September to 22 October (exact times vary by year)

Element

Air

Modality

Cardinal

Ruled by

Venus

Exaltation

Saturn

Detriment

Mars

Fall

The Sun

Natural house

The 7th house

Opposite sign

Aries

Which stars make up Libra?

Libra is a modest group of stars between Virgo and Scorpius, with no truly bright stars. Its two brightest still carry their old Arabic names, Zubenelgenubi, “the southern claw”, and Zubeneschamali, “the northern claw”.

Some observers over the centuries have described Zubeneschamali as faintly green, which would make it one of the only green tinted stars visible to the eye. Most people see it as plain white, and the debate is part of its charm.

Where does Libra come from?

Libra is the only sign of the zodiac that is an object rather than a creature. The Babylonians already saw scales here, ZIB.BA.AN.NA, linked to the sun god Shamash, the judge who saw everything.

The Greeks disagreed. To them these stars were the Chelae, the claws of the scorpion next door, and their star names still say so. By the first century BCE, Roman writers had turned the claws back into scales, and the scales won.

The balance made sense to anyone watching the calendar. When the zodiac was set down, the Sun entered Libra at the September equinox, the day when light and dark are equal everywhere on Earth.

How does Libra 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 Libra rising?

The share of each day with Libra on the Ascendant, and how long it takes to rise, at four latitudes. In London it is the 3rd most common of the 12 rising signs.

Place	Share of the day	Time to rise
Equator	7.7%	112 min
Madrid	10.5%	151 min
London	11.8%	171 min
Reykjavík	14.5%	210 min

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How common is Libra?

In US birth records from 1994 to 2014, 8.51% of babies were born under Libra, about 85 in every 1,000. That makes Libra number 5 of 12, where 1 is the most common.

See all 12 signs ranked

When is the Moon next in Libra?

The Moon is next in Libra from Thu 5 Nov 14:38 UTC until Sat 7 Nov 22:39 UTC.

The next full moon in Libra is the Worm Moon, on Monday 22 March 2027.

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.