60 Fun Facts About Aries

Aries is which sign of the zodiac?

It spans the first 30 degrees of celestial longitude.

What does the Latin word 'Aries' mean?

The Greek name was Krios, also meaning ram.

Under the tropical zodiac, the Sun is in Aries from roughly March 22 to which date?

That span is exactly the first month of the Solar Hijri calendar used in Iran.

In tropical astrology, the Sun enters Aries at which astronomical moment?

The equinox drifts about six hours later each year until a leap year resets it.

Aries belongs to which of the three astrological 'elements'?

The three fire signs are spaced four signs apart around the wheel.

Which two other signs share Aries's fire element?

The elements rotate fire, earth, air, water through the twelve signs.

Which planet rules Aries in astrology?

The Sun, meanwhile, is said to be 'exalted' in Aries.

Which sign sits directly opposite Aries in the zodiac?

The First Point of Libra marks the September equinox, exactly 180 degrees from the First Point of Aries.

Aries is one of the four signs of which 'modality'?

Cardinal signs open each season; the others are Cancer, Libra and Capricorn.

What colour is traditionally assigned to Aries?

It matches the red planet Mars.

What is the equivalent of Aries in the Hindu calendar?

The constellation was also known in Hindu astronomy as Aja.

The first month of Iran's Solar Hijri calendar, which corresponds to Aries, is called what?

It has 31 days, opens with Nowruz at the spring equinox and is called Hamal in Arabic and Wray in Pashto.

The astrological Aries symbol derives from which creature of Greek myth?

It rescued Phrixus and Helle and later provided the Golden Fleece.

Phrixus and Helle, rescued by the golden ram, were the children of which king?

Their mother was the cloud goddess Nephele; their stepmother Ino plotted their deaths.

How did the jealous stepmother Ino engineer the sacrifice of Phrixus?

The king was about to sacrifice his son on Mount Laphystium when the ram, sent by Nephele, arrived.

Helle fell from the ram's back and drowned in a strait that took her name. What is it called today?

The ancient name Hellespont honours her.

The golden ram carried Phrixus safely to which land?

It lay on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, in what is now western Georgia.

According to the Golden Fleece myth, the ram was sired by which god in ram form?

The mother was the nymph Theophane, whom Poseidon turned into a ewe on an island.

What did Phrixus do with the ram once he reached his refuge on the Black Sea?

The act returned the ram to its divine sire, and it became the constellation Aries.

The Golden Fleece hung on an oak in a grove sacred to which god, guarded by a never-sleeping dragon?

The Aries article notes that beyond the link to Mars there is no connection between the sign and Ares, the god of war.

Which hero later stole the Golden Fleece from King Aeëtes, with the help of the king's daughter Medea?

King Pelias set the quest to keep Jason from the throne of Iolcus.

The name Phrixus is said to mean 'curly', referring to what?

The Golden Fleece today appears in the heraldry of western Georgia, including the arms of Kutaisi.

The constellation Aries lies between which two zodiac constellations?

It is a mid-sized constellation, ranking 39th of the 88 with an area of 441 square degrees.

How large is the constellation Aries in area?

That puts it 39th in size among the 88 modern constellations.

Before the stars of Aries represented a ram in late Babylonian times, what did they depict?

The MUL.APIN tablets called it MULLÚ.ḪUN.GÁ, 'The Agrarian Worker'; the ram came with the growing link to Dumuzi the Shepherd.

The earliest clear references to Aries as a ram come from Babylonian boundary stones of what era?

On several of the stones a zodiacal ram figure is distinct from the other characters.

In ancient Egyptian astronomy, Aries was associated with which ram-headed god?

As the location of the vernal equinox it was called the 'Indicator of the Reborn Sun' and 'Lord of the Head'.

Aries is traditionally depicted as a crouched, wingless ram with its head turned towards what?

The Almagest says an earlier astronomer placed Alpha Arietis on the ram's muzzle, though its author listed it as an 'unformed star' over the head.

Which 2nd-century astronomer listed Aries among his 48 constellations?

It remains one of the 88 modern constellations recognised by the IAU.

The First Point of Aries marks the location of what?

It is the celestial 'prime meridian' from which right ascension is measured.

Because of precession, which constellation hosts the First Point of Aries until around AD 2600?

Precession has carried the equinox point out of Aries; it will move on into Aquarius around AD 2600.

Who defined the First Point of Aries in 130 BC as a point south of Gamma Arietis?

The Sun crossed the celestial equator northward in Aries more than two millennia ago.

In the 21st century, when does the Sun actually pass through the constellation Aries?

The astrological sign and the astronomical constellation parted company long ago through precession.

The brightest star in Aries, Hamal, takes its name from the Arabic for what?

It lies about 66 light-years away with an apparent magnitude of 2.0.

What kind of star is Hamal, Alpha Arietis?

It is thought to host a planet more massive than Jupiter and ranks around 50th brightest in the night sky.

The name Sheratan comes from the Arabic for 'the two signs', referring to what?

The Bedouin called the same pair 'qarna al-hamal', the horns of the ram.

Gamma Arietis, Mesarthim, was discovered to be a double star in 1664 by whom?

It was one of the earliest telescopic double-star discoveries.

Sheratan, Beta Arietis, was found to be a spectroscopic binary in 1903 by which astronomer?

Hans Ludendorff worked out its eccentric orbit in 1907.

Teegarden's Star, the closest star to Earth in Aries, is what type of star?

Only 12.5 light-years away but magnitude 15, it hosts at least three planets and has one of the largest proper motions known.

The runaway star 53 Arietis was likely ejected from which star-forming region?

Supernovae are the suspected cause of its ejection.

SX Arietis is the prototype of which class of variable star?

They show strong Helium I and Silicon III emission lines and vary with their rotation.

The Daytime Arietids, one of the strongest daytime meteor showers, peak on which date?

They are associated with the Marsden group of comets and are mostly observed by radio.

Which observatory discovered the Daytime Arietid meteor shower in 1947?

James Hey and G. S. Stewart adapted wartime radar systems to track the meteors' ionised trails.

The obsolete constellations Apes, Vespa and Musca Borealis shared four stars now in Aries. What did Apes represent?

Petrus Plancius introduced it in 1612; Bartsch made the stars a wasp and Royer a fleur-de-lis.

In Chinese astronomy, Alpha, Beta and Gamma Arietis formed 'Lou', a constellation associated with what?

Lou also named the 16th lunar mansion, near the autumn full moon.

In the Marshall Islands, stars from Aries formed the head of a constellation depicting which animal?

Andromeda supplied the body and Cassiopeia the tail.

The first lunar mansion in Hindu astronomy, named for Beta and Gamma Arietis, is called what?

The Rig Veda has over 50 new-year hymns to the Aswins, since the Hindu year began at the vernal equinox.

The IAU's three-letter abbreviation for Aries, set in 1922, is what?

Eugène Delporte drew its official 12-segment boundary in 1930.

Around what date did Babylonian astronomers divide the ecliptic into 12 equal signs?

Modern calculations place the zodiac's introduction between 409 and 398 BC, under Persian rule.

Astrologers who round each 'astrological age' to 2,000 years place the Age of Aries in which period?

True precession gives about 2,160 years per age, one degree every 72 years.

In astrology, which body is said to be 'exalted' in Aries?

The Sun rules Leo but reaches its exaltation in the first sign.

Astrologically, the constellation Aries was associated with which part of the body?

It was also said to govern Western Europe and Syria and to indicate a strong temper.

'Aries', a 2020 single by Gorillaz, featured drummer Georgia and which famous bassist?

It was the third single from Song Machine, Season One, and its video was shot on Moroccan highways.

Which two singles from Luis Miguel's 1993 album Aries topped the US Hot Latin Songs chart?

'Suave' peaked at number nine, and David Foster and Juan Luis Guerra helped produce.

The professional wrestler Austin Aries is a three-time world champion of which promotion?

He was also the first multi-time ROH World Champion and a six-time TNA X Division Champion.

Aries is one of how many modern constellations recognised by the International Astronomical Union?

Ptolemy's 2nd-century list had 48; today's official set defines each constellation as a region of sky rather than a star pattern.

In Hellenistic astrology, the golden ram rescued Phrixus and Helle on the orders of which god?

The ram carried Phrixus to Colchis, where its fleece became the prize Jason later sought.

What is the Ancient Greek name for the sign Aries?

Despite the shared Mars link, there is no real connection between Aries and Ares, the war god.

Jakob Bartsch's obsolete 1624 constellation Vespa, drawn from four Aries stars, represented what?

The same stars, now 33, 35, 39 and 41 Arietis, were also used for Apes, Lilium and Musca Borealis over the following decades.

What is the traditional name of Delta Arietis, a magnitude 4.35 star 170 light-years away?

It is a K2-class star; most other naked-eye stars in Aries fall between magnitudes 3 and 5.