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the zodiac

Aries

from , ,
to ,

The Sun in front of the constellation
19 April to 14 May 2026
Brightest star
Hamal
In astrological tradition
fire sign, cardinal sign
Traditional ruler
Mars
Engraving from 1690: a reclining ram with its head turned back, on a grid of coordinates between Musca and Taurus.
Johannes Hevelius, Firmamentum Sobiescianum, Gdańsk, 1690, plate of Aries (detail). As on a celestial globe, the sky is seen from outside, and therefore mirrored.

The ram with the golden fleece

For the Greeks, this is the ram that rescued Phrixus and Helle. Sent on Hermes’s orders, the golden-fleeced animal carried the two children through the air. Helle slipped off and drowned in the Dardanelles; Phrixus reached Colchis.

Ptolemy reports in the Almagest that Hipparchus saw the creature’s muzzle in the star Hamal.

From labourer to ram

The MUL.APIN tablets, dated to the 12th or 11th century BC, saw no ram here but ‘the agrarian worker’, the hired man. Later Babylonian tradition turned it into a ram, probably through Dumuzi the shepherd.

In 130 BC Hipparchus placed the vernal point, the start of the zodiac of signs, south of Gamma Arietis. Precession has since carried it into Pisces, and it will reach Aquarius around the year 2600.

The real constellation

Its brightest stars, Hamal, Sheratan and Mesarthim, range from second to fourth magnitude. Several meteor showers belong to it too, including the Daytime Arietids, which peak on 7 June in broad daylight.

From Brussels, Hamal climbs to 63 degrees and is highest around 10 pm in early December. In 2026 the Sun stood in front of the constellation from 19 April to 14 May, while the sign ran from 20 March to 20 April.

Its stars

Alpha Arietis

Hamal

Magnitude 2.00, about 66 light years away. An orange giant whose name comes from the Arabic for ‘the lamb’ or ‘the head of the ram’.

Beta Arietis

Sheratan

Magnitude 2.64, about 59 light years away. Hermann Carl Vogel recognised it as a double star in 1903.

Gamma Arietis

Mesarthim

Combined magnitude 3.9, about 164 light years away. Robert Hooke found it to be double in 1664.

41 Arietis

A blue-white star

Magnitude 3.63, about 165 light years away, spectral type B8.

In art and history

Aries changed shape along the way: a man at work became an animal.

  • BabylonIn the MUL.APIN tablets the constellation is LÚ.ḪUN.GÁ, ‘the agrarian worker’.
  • Ptolemaic EgyptOn the Dendera zodiac, now in the Louvre, the ram appears in its familiar Graeco-Roman form.
  • Scientific atlasesIn 1690 Hevelius engraved a reclining ram looking back over its shoulder, on a chart where every star is measured.

Aries this week

Read it for pleasure, not for prophecy.

A piece written for fun, based on the real sky of 19 to 25 October 2026. It says nothing about your future.

Mars, your ruler by tradition, rises this week around in the constellation Cancer. Magnitude 1, reddish, an early riser: you could hardly ask for a better standard-bearer.

Your own stars are up all evening. Around midnight, look for Hamal high in the south-east. It isn’t an omen; it’s a star 66 light years away, which is already quite something.

Sources

Facts checked in the following sources; positions and times computed for Brussels.