Scorpio

Scorpio at a glance

Symbol

The Scorpion

Sun in Scorpio

About 23 October to 21 November (exact times vary by year)

Element

Water

Modality

Fixed

Ruled by

Mars in traditional astrology, Pluto in modern astrology

Exaltation

None in traditional astrology

Detriment

Venus

Fall

The Moon

Natural house

The 8th house

Opposite sign

Taurus

Which stars make up Scorpio?

Scorpius is one of the few constellations that genuinely looks like its name, a long curving body ending in a raised stinger. At its heart burns Antares, a red supergiant hundreds of times wider than the Sun.

Its name means “rival of Mars”, because its red glow is easily mistaken for the planet. Every two years or so, Mars passes close by, and the two red lights sit side by side.

Where does Scorpio come from?

In Babylon this was GIR.TAB, the Scorpion, and in the Epic of Gilgamesh scorpion people guard the gates of the mountains where the Sun rises and sets. The figure has never been anything else.

Greek myth tied it to Orion the hunter, who boasted he could kill any animal on earth. The earth sent a scorpion to sting him, and both were placed in the sky on opposite sides. To this day, as Scorpius rises in the east, Orion sets in the west, still fleeing.

Here the signs and the stars part company most dramatically. The Sun only crosses the stars of Scorpius for about a week each year, then spends nearly three weeks in Ophiuchus, the serpent bearer.

In 2016 a NASA page for children mentioned this, and headlines announced a “13th zodiac sign”. Astronomers have known it for decades; astrology simply never used the constellations to begin with.

How does Scorpio 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 Scorpio rising?

The share of each day with Scorpio on the Ascendant, and how long it takes to rise, at four latitudes. In London it is the 4th most common of the 12 rising signs.

Place	Share of the day	Time to rise
Equator	8.3%	119 min
Madrid	10.6%	153 min
London	11.8%	170 min
Reykjavík	15.3%	221 min

Find your rising sign

The rarest rising sign, city by city

How common is Scorpio?

In US birth records from 1994 to 2014, 8.15% of babies were born under Scorpio, about 81 in every 1,000. That makes Scorpio number 8 of 12, where 1 is the most common.

See all 12 signs ranked

When is the Moon next in Scorpio?

The Moon is next in Scorpio from Sat 7 Nov 22:39 UTC until Tue 10 Nov 08:35 UTC.

The next new moon in Scorpio is on Monday 9 November 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.