The Sign Where the Sun Was on the Day You Were Born
Your sun sign is the sign where the Sun was on the day you were born. It is the most basic sign in fortune-telling, and in general, the sign you answer when asked "What sign are you?" corresponds to this sun sign.
How it is determined is simple. If you know your birthday, the sign corresponding to that date becomes your sun sign. It is not determined by the time or place you were born. However, if you were born on a day that falls on a sign boundary, as described later, the sign that applies can shift forward or backward depending on the year.
Knowing your own sun sign is the starting point when reading monthly horoscopes and yearly horoscopes. This site's monthly horoscope is also written divided by sun sign.
The Sun Goes Through the 12 Signs Once in One Year
The Sun goes through the 12 signs once in one year. The period it stays in one sign is about 1 month. At the same speed as the seasons change, the Sun's sign also changes.
The break point of about one month, dividing one year by 12, is a length close to a calendar. For that reason, sun sign periods are often shown in tables divided by month. However, they do not align neatly with the beginning and end of a month. Signs change most often in the middle of a month.
To give an example for 2027, by calculation, Aries is from March 21 to April 20, Cancer is from June 21 to July 23, and Capricorn begins on December 22. You can see that by sign, both the starting day and the number of days it continues differ slightly. For date tables, it is accurate to check ones calculated for each year.
Boundary Days Shift Forward and Backward by Year
What tends to cause confusion when determining a sun sign is how to handle boundary days.
The border between one sign and another is not fixed by date alone. Depending on the time the Sun changes signs, boundary days shift forward and backward by year. For example, in one year it changes at an early time on the 21st, and in another year it changes at a late time on the 21st. As a result, even with the same birthday, your sun sign can change depending on the year you were born.
Leap years also affect this shift. Because a leap year has one more day in the year, the correspondence between calendar dates and the Sun's position shifts, and that shift leads to the forward and backward movement of boundary days.
People born on a boundary day need to check not only with a general date table, but with the Sun's movement in the year they were born. If you were born on a day away from a boundary, this shift has no effect. Whether your own birthday is close to a boundary can be seen by comparing it with that year's period table.
A Sun Sign Alone Does Not Decide Everything
A sun sign is basic, but readings are not all decided by it alone.
Monthly horoscopes are written by sun sign because the break point of about one month is easy to overlap with monthly plans, and anyone can check their own sign immediately. In the actual movements of the stars, there are also the positions of the Moon and other planets, and this site's monthly horoscope also lists the movements of the stars as a whole for that month as the basis, together with the sun sign reading.
As a way of reading, a form that suits is to use the sun sign as an entrance, and check the basis with the movements of the stars as a whole. Instead of reading only the text for your own sign and ending there, if you line up which planet moves into which sign that month, you will be able to follow why the reading takes that form.
The same applies when using it for work judgments. A sun sign reading is material for organizing how to think about a period, and judgment itself is something to do based on actual conditions and records.
Why Birthdays and Signs Correspond in a Form Close to Months
Sun sign tables have become a form that is easy to remember because the stay of about one month and the calendar month are close in length. However, the correspondence is in daily units, not monthly units. Even within the same month, the Sun's sign can be different in the first half and the second half.
For that reason, when checking your own sign, look not only at the month, but always at the date as well. In particular, people born in the second half of a month may straddle the day a sign changes. A habit of checking down to the date is the basis for not mistaking the sign for reading a monthly horoscope. When asking about the signs of family members and colleagues, thinking by date in the same way is accurate.
Check Your Own Sign's Period Once a Year
The Sun's movements repeat every year, but the period for each sign differs slightly by year. For that reason, for a sun sign period table, a usage that is accurate is to check that year's table once a year.
In particular, for people with a birthday close to a boundary, there is meaning in checking each time the year changes. Even for people away from a boundary, knowing the day your own sign begins and the day it ends makes it easier to overlap the break points of a monthly horoscope with your own plans.
A sun sign is determined from the clear fact of the Sun's position on the day you were born. Precisely because the mechanism is simple, it has been used for a long time as an entrance to fortune-telling. After grasping how it is determined correctly, please use monthly readings for organizing work and daily life.