99 Fun Facts About Aquarius

Which symbol stands for Aquarius in horoscopes and on star charts?

Two wavy lines. They are usually read as ripples of the water that the figure of Aquarius, Latin for 'water-carrier', pours out across the sky.

Aquarius is eleventh in the zodiac, which starts each spring with what sign?

Aries. Astrologers count the signs from the March equinox, the first day of northern spring, so every list of them opens with Aries and reaches Aquarius second to last.

Despite its name and its jar, Aquarius belongs to which of the four elements?

Air. The four elements repeat through the zodiac in a set order (fire, earth, air, water), so the eleventh sign lands on air, whatever its figure is pouring.

Aquarius only carries water; which of these signs truly belongs to the water element?

Scorpio. Two other signs share its water element; each element claims every fourth sign, so the trio fall four months apart around the year.

Which planet is Aquarius's ruler in modern astrology?

Uranus. It was unknown as a planet until William Herschel spotted it by telescope in 1781; modern astrologers later moved Aquarius to it from the sign's ancient ruler.

In astrology, which modality, the quality given to mid-season signs, does Aquarius have?

Fixed. The modalities track a sign's place in its season: cardinal signs open one, while fixed signs such as Aquarius hold the settled middle, here midwinter in the north.

Which sign is opposite Aquarius on the zodiac wheel?

Leo. The Sun is said to rule Leo, so astrologers call it 'in detriment', at its weakest, while it crosses the opposite sign in the depth of northern winter.

Under the tropical zodiac the Sun is in Aquarius between roughly which dates?

January 21 to February 19. Calendars differ by a day, and many print January 20 to February 18, because the Sun reaches the sign at a slightly different moment each year.

While horoscopes place the Sun in Aquarius, it actually spends the first weeks of that season in which constellation?

Capricornus. Earth's slow wobble has slid the constellations about a month out of step with the signs since the zodiac was drawn up, so the Sun only reaches the stars of Aquarius in mid-February.

Astrologers pair Aquarius with the eleventh house of a birth chart, which governs what part of life?

Friendships and groups. The twelve houses are matched to the signs in order, so the eleventh falls to Aquarius; astrologers also read a person's hopes and wishes there.

Which name does Hindu astrology give Aquarius, a word shared with the world's largest pilgrimage gathering?

Kumbha. The Sanskrit word means 'water pot', which is why India's Kumbh Mela, the pilgrimage where millions bathe in sacred rivers, is the 'festival of the sacred pitcher'.

Roughly how long does an astrological age, such as the Age of Aquarius, last?

About 2,160 years. Earth's axis takes roughly 26,000 years to trace one slow wobble, and astrologers split that circuit into twelve equal ages, one for each constellation of the zodiac.

Which age does the Age of Aquarius follow, since astrological ages run backwards through the zodiac?

The Age of Pisces. Each age is named for the constellation behind the Sun at the March equinox, and that point creeps backwards through the zodiac, out of Pisces and toward Aquarius.

Which 1967 musical opened with a song declaring 'the dawning of the Age of Aquarius'?

Hair. The rock musical's opening number helped carry the phrase 'Age of Aquarius' out of astrology books and into everyday speech, where it became shorthand for the hippie era.

The Sun passes through Aquarius early in the year, hiding its stars; in which season do northern evenings show them best?

Autumn. A constellation is washed out by daylight while the Sun crosses it, so the stars of Aquarius return to the evening sky months later and stand highest around October.

Which ancient scholar's list of 48 constellations includes Aquarius?

Ptolemy. His Almagest set out 48 star figures that astronomers never dropped: all still appear on today's official sky map, except a giant ship that was later split into three.

The two brightest stars of Aquarius look modest only because they lie over 500 light-years away; what are they?

Yellow supergiants. Each began as a hot blue star several times the Sun's mass, then swelled and cooled; the brighter now pours out more than 2,000 times the Sun's light.

Which Apollo mission's lunar module, named Aquarius, served its crew as a lifeboat after an explosion in space?

Apollo 13. With their command ship crippled, three astronauts lived for about four days in Aquarius, a lander built to keep two men alive for two days on the Moon.

Old star maps show the stream poured by Aquarius ending at which bright star in the Southern Fish?

Fomalhaut. Ancient astronomers counted it twice, as the end of the stream and as the mouth of the fish that drinks it; modern borders give the star to the Southern Fish alone.

As a zodiac constellation, Aquarius lies along which line, the Sun's yearly path across the sky?

The ecliptic. It is named for eclipses, which can happen only when the Moon crosses this line; the Moon and planets keep close to it, so they too pass through Aquarius.

The ultracool dwarf TRAPPIST-1 made headlines in 2017 for having how many Earth-sized planets?

Seven. The find made TRAPPIST-1 the most closely studied planetary system beyond our own, and the James Webb Space Telescope is now checking its worlds for atmospheres.

The telescope that found TRAPPIST-1's planets has a name honouring the monastery beers of which country?

Belgium. The University of Liège team bent 'Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope' into TRAPPIST as a salute to the country's famous abbey ales.

In 1998 Gliese 876 in Aquarius became the first of which small, dim, common type of star found with a planet?

Red dwarf. Its giant planet, found circling a star with a third of the Sun's mass, was then the nearest known beyond the Solar System and a puzzle for theories of how planets form.

Which nebula in Aquarius, among the nearest of its kind to Earth, has been nicknamed the 'Eye of God'?

The Helix Nebula. Its rings are the outer layers thrown off by a dying Sun-like star and lit by the hot core left behind, so it shows what the Sun itself will one day become.

Lord Rosse saw handle-like lobes on either side of NGC 7009 in Aquarius and named the nebula after which planet?

Saturn. The faint lobes on either side reminded him of the planet's rings; the nebula itself had been discovered by William Herschel in 1782.

M73 in Aquarius was long listed as a star cluster, but what really links its four stars?

Chance alignment. Spectra showed that its stars lie at very different distances and move in different directions, so the 'cluster' logged in 1780 is only a pattern as seen from Earth.

The galaxy NGC 7252 in Aquarius is nicknamed 'Atoms for Peace' after a speech by which US president?

Dwight D. Eisenhower. His 1953 speech urged peaceful uses of nuclear power, and the name stuck to the galaxy because its looping trails of stars resemble a textbook atom, with electrons circling a nucleus.

The Eta Aquariid meteors that streak from Aquarius each May are dust shed by which comet?

Halley's Comet. Earth crosses its dust trail twice a year, so the same comet also feeds October's Orionids, though the comet itself returns only about every 76 years.

Aquarius holds three objects catalogued by which French comet hunter?

Charles Messier. He listed these fuzzy objects only to stop comet hunters like himself wasting time on them, yet the nuisance list became one of the best-known catalogues of sights in the sky.

The Sun crosses thirteen constellations each year, Aquarius among them; which one has no zodiac sign of its own?

Ophiuchus. The Sun spends about eighteen days in the Serpent Bearer each year, more than twice as long as it spends in neighbouring Scorpius, which does have a sign.

Babylonians saw Aquarius as which god of fresh water, often shown holding an overflowing vase?

Ea (Enki). Babylonian star lists call his figure 'the Great One'; in the Mesopotamian deluge stories he is the god who defies the others and warns one man to build a boat.

Medieval doctors mapped the twelve signs onto the body from head to feet in zodiac order; which part fell to Aquarius?

The ankles. The scheme runs down the body sign by sign, so the last sign takes the feet and Aquarius the part just above; horoscope guides still list ankles and shins as its territory.

Egyptians tied Aquarius to their god Hapi, who was credited each year with which event?

The Nile flooded. Each summer the river spread a fresh layer of silt over its banks, which is what let crops grow in a desert country, so Egypt's water-pourer was a giver of life.

In Greek myth, Aquarius is most often identified with which beautiful youth carried off by Zeus?

Ganymede. Homer calls him the loveliest of mortals; Zeus set him to pour nectar for the gods on Olympus, to the lasting annoyance of his wife Hera.

In the usual telling, Zeus took which form to seize the youth who became Aquarius?

An eagle. Whether the bird was Zeus himself or only his messenger depends on the teller; either way it is honoured next door in the sky as the constellation Aquila.

In Greek myth, the youth who became Aquarius was a prince of which city, named after his father?

Troy. His father, King Tros, gave the city its name; in Homer's telling Zeus paid Tros for the boy with a team of the finest horses under the sun.

Which naturalist, an Aquarius, was born on the very same day in 1809 as Abraham Lincoln?

Charles Darwin. He held back his theory of evolution for some twenty years, gathering evidence, and went public only after a younger naturalist wrote to him with the same idea.

In most tellings, the youth behind Aquarius took over from which goddess as cupbearer to the gods?

Hebe. The goddess of youth had poured nectar and ambrosia for the Olympians; classical writers say she gave the post up on marrying Heracles, the hero raised to godhood.

The Solar System's largest moon is named after the cupbearer of Greek myth; which planet does it orbit?

Jupiter. Galileo spotted the moon in 1610 with three companions, the first moons ever seen circling another planet, and the sight helped overturn the idea that everything orbits Earth.

Aquarius is also linked with which son of Prometheus, who survived a great flood with his wife Pyrrha?

Deucalion. Once the waters fell, he and Pyrrha repopulated the world by throwing stones over their shoulders: his turned into men and hers into women.

Cecrops, a mythical king linked to Aquarius for offering the gods water instead of wine, ruled which city?

Athens. Cecrops was pictured as a man above the waist and a serpent below, and when Athena planted her olive tree to claim the city from Poseidon she called on him as her witness.

The word zodiac, for the band that holds Aquarius, comes from Greek for a circle of what?

Little animals. Most of the twelve signs are beasts, a bull, a crab and a pair of fish among them, so the Greeks named the whole band after them, though it also holds human figures such as Aquarius.

Aquarius lies in 'the Sea', a region of water-themed constellations that also includes which of these?

Cetus. Star maps call it the whale, but the Greeks pictured a sea monster: the beast sent to devour Andromeda until Perseus arrived.

Which gemstone is the February birthstone, covering most of Aquarius season?

Amethyst. Its Greek name means 'not drunk': the ancients carved cups from the purple stone and wore it in the belief that it kept a drinker sober.

Aquarius lies between which two constellations of the zodiac?

Capricornus and Pisces. Though Aquarius is the tenth-largest constellation in the sky, it is hard to pick out between them: none of its stars is brighter than third magnitude.

Which 1969 music festival was billed as 'An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music'?

Woodstock. It was planned to turn a profit, but the fences and ticket booths were not ready when nearly half a million people arrived, so the organisers declared it a free concert.

Which vocal group took the medley 'Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In' to number one in America in 1969?

The 5th Dimension. A lost wallet led to it: the man who returned singer Billy Davis Jr.'s wallet from a New York cab worked on the stage show and invited the group to see it.

Sadalsuud is the brightest of several stars in Aquarius with Arabic 'luck' names; what does its name mean?

Luck of lucks. The Arabic is also rendered 'luckiest of the lucky', and the name fits: though labelled Beta, the star narrowly outshines Alpha, whose own name means 'luck of the king'.

Aquarius Reef Base, the undersea laboratory where NASA trains astronauts, lies off the coast of which US state?

Florida. The lab sits about 60 feet down beside a coral reef in the Keys, and NASA sends crews to live in it because the seabed is nearly as hostile to the human body as space.

NASA's Aquarius instrument, launched in 2011, mapped which property of the world's oceans from orbit?

Salinity. It gave NASA its first global maps of the sea's salt from space; shifts in saltiness show where rain falls and water evaporates, a key to Earth's water cycle.

In the NBC drama Aquarius, David Duchovny's detective tracks which cult leader?

Charles Manson. The series opens in 1967, two years before the murders that made him infamous, with the detective working a missing-person case that leads to his followers.

Aquarius is the tenth-largest constellation; which snake, winding a quarter of the way round the sky, is the largest?

Hydra. For all its size the water snake is easy to miss: its one fairly bright star, Alphard, sits alone in a long stretch of faint ones.

Stargazers find faint Aquarius by starting from the Great Square, a landmark of which constellation?

Pegasus. The Square is the winged horse's body, though one of its four corner stars now officially belongs to neighbouring Andromeda.

Only one zodiac constellation covers more sky than Aquarius; which is it, home to the bright star Spica?

Virgo. Size shows in the calendar: the Sun takes about six weeks to cross the maiden's stars, longer than it spends in any other constellation, against under four weeks in Aquarius.

Which world was discovered in 1846 among the stars of Aquarius, right where a mathematician had said to look?

Neptune: Johann Galle found it the very night Urbain Le Verrier's letter arrived, within a degree of where the Frenchman's sums put it; one slow orbit later, in 2011, it was back in Aquarius.

In 2021 NGC 7727 in Aquarius revealed the closest known pair of what?

Supermassive black holes: the two sit 89 million light-years away and only 1,600 light-years apart, left side by side when two galaxies merged, and are expected to merge into one themselves.

Astrologers give every sign a two-word motto; which one belongs to Aquarius?

I know: astrologers cast Aquarius as the zodiac's cool-headed original, sure of its own ideas and hard to argue out of them, while 'I think' goes to restless Gemini.

In the song that hails the Age of Aquarius, Jupiter lines up with which planet?

Mars: the song's 'dawning' is a moving target, since astrologers surveyed by the historian Nicholas Campion put the start of the age anywhere from 1447 to 3597, most often in the 20th century.

Which psychologist discussed the 'age of Aquarius' in his book Aion?

Carl Jung argued in Aion (1951) that the Aquarian age would raise the problem of uniting the opposites, the forces he saw locked in conflict throughout the era before it.

Which holiday, ending with the Lantern Festival on its fifteenth day, usually starts in Aquarius season?

Chinese New Year usually lands on the second new moon after the winter solstice, which is why its date wanders from one year to the next.

The group behind the 1969 hit Aquarius medley saw its parent musical only after singer Billy Davis Jr lost what?

His wallet was found in a New York cab by a man involved in producing the show, who invited the whole group to see it. They then rang their producer, all talking at once, asking to record the song.

The sports drink Aquarius, launched in Japan in 1983 to rival Pocari Sweat, belongs to which company?

Coca-Cola developed Aquarius in Japan, and it went on to be the official drink of several Olympic Games, beginning with Barcelona in 1992.

Which 2005 Steve Carell comedy ends with the whole cast singing and dancing to the song Aquarius?

The 40-Year-Old Virgin was written by Steve Carell together with Judd Apatow, who cast him after watching him in Anchorman and made the film his first as a director.

Which Aquarius footballer, the costliest signing of 2017, was born on Cristiano Ronaldo's seventh birthday?

Neymar and Ronaldo blow out their candles on the very same date, and Paris Saint-Germain paid a world-record 222 million euros for the younger man.

Which Aquarius composer, born in Salzburg in 1756, was already writing music by the age of five?

Mozart shares his birthday with Lewis Carroll, who arrived exactly 76 years later. At six the boy was performing for the empress in Vienna.

On Olympus, the cupbearer later set among the stars as Aquarius poured which drink for the gods?

Nectar was the gods' own drink, and the Roman poet Ovid wrote that the stream pouring from the jar of Aquarius is water mixed with it.

The lunar module Aquarius flew docked to a command module, now on show in Kansas, with which call sign?

Odyssey was chosen by the crew's commander, who liked the word and its meaning: a long voyage with many changes of fortune.

Which Aquarius poet's birthday is marked across Scotland each winter with suppers of haggis and whisky?

Robert Burns also set down the words of Auld Lang Syne in 1788, building on an older folk song, so he is toasted on his birthday and sung at every New Year.

The French Republican calendar called the month matching Aquarius season Pluviôse, after which kind of weather?

Rain gave Pluviôse its name, by way of the Latin pluvius. The revolutionaries named the months on either side of it for snow and for wind.

Which Aquarius, born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, in 1954, hosted a Chicago talk show that ran for 25 years?

Oprah Winfrey was named Orpah, after a woman in the Book of Ruth, but people mispronounced it so often that Oprah stuck.

Which Aquarius, born in Brooklyn in 1963, won six NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls?

Michael Jordan walked away after his third title to play minor-league baseball, then returned in 1995 and won three more.

Which civil rights figure, an Aquarius born in Tuskegee, Alabama, was arrested for keeping her bus seat in Montgomery?

Rosa Parks was arrested on 1 December 1955, and the bus boycott that followed ran for more than a year, until segregated seating was ruled unconstitutional.

Which reggae singer, an Aquarius born in Nine Mile, Jamaica, shares a birthday with Babe Ruth and Ronald Reagan?

Bob Marley was born on his grandfather's farm in 1945, and in 1963 he formed the group that became the Wailers.

Each of the twelve zodiac signs, Aquarius included, covers an equal slice of the sky spanning how many degrees?

30 degrees is a twelfth of the full circle, a tidy division first devised by the Babylonians. The real constellations behind the signs are far less even.

Aquarius is one of how many constellations officially recognised by the International Astronomical Union?

88 constellations cover the whole sky like a jigsaw: an astronomer drew their borders so that every point belongs to exactly one of them.

Aquarius shares its element with Gemini and which other sign, whose season begins at the September equinox?

Libra completes the trio: the three signs sit 120 degrees apart on the zodiac wheel, forming a triangle that astrologers call a triplicity.

The object M2 in Aquarius packs about 150,000 stars into a ball 175 light-years wide; what kind of object is it?

Globular cluster M2 is one of the largest known, and at more than 12 billion years old it is among the oldest companions of the Milky Way.

Which astronomer found the nebula NGC 7009 in Aquarius in 1782, a year after discovering a new planet?

William Herschel spotted it from the garden of his home in Datchet, England, using a telescope he had designed himself.

The Age of Aquarius depends on which slow wobble of Earth's axis, a discovery credited to Hipparchus?

Precession slowly turns Earth's axis, so the spring equinox slides backwards through the zodiac. Hipparchus caught it by comparing his own measurements with older Babylonian records.

The Southern Delta Aquariids, a meteor shower streaming from Aquarius, reach their peak late in which month?

July closes with the shower's best nights, and viewers in the southern hemisphere usually get the better show because its radiant climbs higher in their sky.

Four stars in Aquarius form an asterism known as the Water Jar, arranged in the shape of which letter?

Y is the outline of the Water Jar, which some modern observers nickname the Steering Wheel. Arab stargazers linked the same four stars with tents.

February, which holds most of Aquarius season, takes its name from a Roman ritual of what?

Purification was the purpose of Februa, a cleansing rite held in the middle of the month. The Romans added February late, having once left winter with no months at all.

Which Gaelic festival in the middle of Aquarius season falls midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox?

Imbolc is also Saint Brigid's Day, and since 2023 it has been a public holiday in Ireland.

The 1969 Aquarius medley, six weeks a US number one, went on to win which of the top Grammy awards?

Record of the Year went to the medley at the 1970 ceremony, and its singers had taped their vocals in Las Vegas with only two microphones between them.

The 2016 film Aquarius stars Sônia Braga as the last resident of a block she refuses to sell; which country made it?

Brazil greeted the film with both standing ovations and calls for a boycott, after its cast held up political protest signs at the Cannes Film Festival.

Which toy company, maker of the Intellivision console, launched a short-lived home computer called Aquarius in 1983?

Mattel dropped the machine only a few months after launch, and its own programmers joked that it was a system built for the previous decade.

Which R&B singer named her 2014 debut album Aquarius after her own zodiac sign and scored a hit with 2 On?

Tinashe had made her name with mixtapes before signing to RCA, and the album entered the Billboard 200 at number 17.

The robotic telescope that first spotted planets around TRAPPIST-1 stands at La Silla Observatory in which country?

Chile hosts the southern TRAPPIST telescope high in its mountains, and a northern twin opened in Morocco's Atlas Mountains in 2016.

NASA's Aquarius instrument reached orbit in 2011 aboard SAC-D, a satellite built and run by which country?

Argentina's space agency flew the satellite for nearly four years, until a power failure ended the mission in June 2015.

Second-season episodes of the NBC drama Aquarius are all named after tracks on which Beatles record?

The White Album was an obsession of the real cult leader at the heart of the drama, so its writers borrowed the track titles.

In Homer's Iliad, Zeus repays the father of the youth who became Aquarius with which gift?

A pair of horses is the usual telling; Homer calls them the finest under the sun, while some later writers made the gift a golden vine.

Chinese astronomy places the stars of Aquarius in the northern quarter of the sky, guarded by which creature?

Black Tortoise of the North is one of four guardian symbols, and inside its quarter Chinese skywatchers saw the Water Jar of Aquarius as a tomb.

Babylonian star catalogues listed Aquarius as GU.LA, a name that translates as which title?

The Great One was the Babylonians' name for the figure, whom they drew holding a vase that overflows with water.

R Aquarii, a white dwarf pulling gas from a red giant, is among the nearest of which kind of double star?

Symbiotic binary partners like these trade material, and the smaller one now and then flings the surplus gas off in loops, building a glowing cloud around the pair.

The faint Aquarius Dwarf galaxy, first catalogued in 1959, is an isolated member of which gathering of galaxies?

The Local Group counts it among its loneliest members, and its place in the family was only settled in 1999, once its distance could be measured.

NASA has sent astronauts to live for weeks in the Aquarius undersea laboratory on missions known by which acronym?

NEEMO stands for NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations, and its crews spend up to three weeks on the seabed rehearsing work for future space missions.

Lunar module Aquarius was destroyed on re-entry, but its plutonium fuel cask was steered to sink where in the Pacific?

The Tonga Trench was picked as a safe resting place: the cask had been built to survive re-entry, and later helicopter surveys found no radioactive leak.

Which Aquarius, born in Milan, Ohio, in 1847, became known as the Wizard of Menlo Park?

Thomas Edison registered 1,093 patents in the United States, and his Menlo Park site is now considered the first industrial research laboratory.

Which Aquarius, born in Cairo, Georgia, in 1919, broke baseball's colour line with the Brooklyn Dodgers?

Jackie Robinson started at first base on 15 April 1947, though he had grown up a long way from Georgia, in Pasadena, California.