50 Fun Facts About Sagittarius

Which of these Sagittarius pop stars released a song called 'The Archer' in 2019?

Taylor Swift. She named it for her own star sign and gave it track five on her album Lover, the slot she says she saves for her most vulnerable, personal songs.

Sagittarius, the ninth sign, is tied to the ninth house, which governs what?

Travel. It is the house of long journeys, and astrologers stretch that to journeys of the mind as well: philosophy, belief and higher learning.

Which planet rules Sagittarius?

Jupiter. The planet also gave English the word 'jovial': astrologers held that anyone born under Jove's influence was cheerful by nature.

Sagittarius belongs to which element?

Fire. Astrology tied each element to one of the four ancient temperaments, so fire signs were expected to be choleric: hot, dry and quick-tempered.

Which modality fits Sagittarius, a sign that ends a season?

Mutable. The label comes from where a sign sits in its season, and those at the tail end are read as the zodiac's chameleons: adaptable and quick to change.

Which sign is opposite Sagittarius on the zodiac wheel?

Gemini. It is the third sign and Sagittarius the ninth, so the two sit exactly six signs apart and face each other across the zodiac wheel.

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

November 23 to December 21. Tropical signs follow the seasons, not the stars: each is an equal twelfth of the Sun's yearly path, counted from the March equinox.

For most of Sagittarius season, the Sun actually sits in front of which constellation?

Ophiuchus. By today's constellation borders the Sun spends about two and a half weeks crossing the Serpent Bearer, the so-called 13th sign, before it reaches the stars of Sagittarius.

In the medieval 'Zodiac Man', which matched each sign to a body part, what did Sagittarius govern?

The thighs. The chart ran from Aries at the top to Pisces at the bottom, and healers checked it before bloodletting, leaving a body part alone while the Moon was in its sign.

Which hero of the Trojan War was raised by the wise centaur some myths place in the sky as Sagittarius?

Achilles. His father Peleus handed him over as a small boy, and the old teacher is said to have raised him on the innards of lions and wild boars and the marrow of bears.

Which of these signs shares the positive, or 'masculine', polarity that astrologers give Sagittarius?

Aquarius. Polarity simply alternates around the wheel, so every odd-numbered sign, from Aries the first to Aquarius the eleventh, counts as positive, active or yang.

What lies in the westernmost part of the constellation Sagittarius?

The centre of the Milky Way. Looking that way means looking through the thickest part of our galaxy, which is why this patch of sky is so crowded with star clusters and nebulae.

The brighter stars of Sagittarius form what well-known asterism?

The Teapot. Its stars sketch a handle, a lid and a spout, a shape far easier to pick out than the centaur they were originally meant to draw.

Arab stargazers pictured the bright stars of Sagittarius as which desert birds?

Ostriches. One group of stars was a flock heading down to drink at a celestial river and another the flock coming back, with an ostrich nest pictured in a curve of stars nearby.

Sagittarius aims his arrow at the heart of the scorpion in the sky, marked by which red star?

Antares. Its name is Greek for 'rival of Ares', the war god the Romans called Mars, because the star glows as red as the planet.

Its zodiac dates fall near year's end, but in which season do northern stargazers see Sagittarius best in the evening?

Summer. Near year's end the Sun is passing through that part of the sky, so the stars of Sagittarius are lost in daylight; six months on, they own the evening.

A constellation's brightest star usually gets which Greek letter, a rule Sagittarius breaks?

Alpha. In Sagittarius the letter went to faint Rukbat, a star too far south to be seen from northern Europe, while the true leader, Kaus Australis, is about seven times brighter.

Chinese astronomers saw six stars of Sagittarius as a southern twin of which famous northern star pattern?

The Big Dipper. China's astronomers named the group Nandou, the Southern Dipper, and Western stargazers later picked out almost the same ladle, calling it the Milk Dipper.

Which country's traditional astrology follows the stars themselves, placing Sagittarius over three weeks later than Western horoscopes do?

India. Vedic astrology measures against the fixed stars, which have slipped almost a whole sign since the Greek zodiac was set, so the two systems now disagree about most people's signs.

Astronomers have shown that the bright radio source Sagittarius A* is what kind of object?

A supermassive black hole. The hole itself is completely dark: its first picture, released in 2022, shows only a shadow ringed by glowing gas whose light its gravity has bent.

Roughly how much mass did astronomers measure for Sagittarius A* by 2022?

4.3 million Suns. Heavy as that sounds, the giant at the heart of the galaxy M87, the first of its kind ever photographed, is more than a thousand times heavier.

The 2022 image of Sagittarius A* used a virtual telescope as wide as what?

The Earth. Eight radio observatories across the planet worked as a single dish, sharp enough to pick out a target that looks as small as a doughnut on the Moon.

Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez shared a 2020 Nobel Prize for decades spent tracking what around Sagittarius A*?

Orbiting stars. One of them, S2, loops around the unseen object about every 16 years, and only an enormous mass packed into a tiny space could swing it that fast.

In the 1930s Karl Jansky traced a strange radio hiss to Sagittarius while hunting static for which company?

Bell Labs. Jansky was an engineer tracking down the static that spoiled overseas radio-telephone calls; the hiss he followed to the stars became the founding discovery of radio astronomy.

Which nebula in Sagittarius, catalogued as M8, has a bright central region called the Hourglass?

The Lagoon Nebula. One hot young star, Herschel 36, lights the Hourglass, and its fierce radiation blows gas away and twists the cloud into rope-like 'twisters'.

Which nebula in Sagittarius, catalogued as M20, is named for the dark lanes that split it into three lobes?

The Trifid Nebula. Its name is Latin for 'split in three', and it shows three kinds of nebula at once: pink glowing gas, blue reflected starlight and the dark lanes that divide it.

The nebula M17 in Sagittarius also goes by which bird's name?

The Swan Nebula. Observers have never agreed on what its glowing shape resembles, so it is also called the Omega, the Horseshoe, the Checkmark and even the Lobster Nebula.

Astronomers searching the gas cloud Sagittarius B2 for the building blocks of life instead found a chemical that flavours which fruit?

Raspberries. The chemical, ethyl formate, also smells of rum; the team had spent years hunting amino acids with a radio telescope and never found them.

Baade's Window in Sagittarius is valued by astronomers because it has very little what?

Obscuring dust. Walter Baade found the clear patch in the mid-1940s with the 100-inch telescope on Mount Wilson, while trying to see deep into the galaxy.

New Horizons is leaving the Solar System toward Sagittarius after flying past which world in 2015?

Pluto. The probe went on to pass a Kuiper Belt object named Arrokoth in 2019, and its nuclear battery will run down long before it comes near another star.

In 1977 astronomer Jerry Ehman circled a strong radio signal from Sagittarius on a printout and wrote which word beside it?

Wow! The burst lasted the full 72 seconds that the telescope could watch that patch of sky, and despite repeated searches it has never been heard again.

Ohio State's Big Ear caught the 1977 Sagittarius signal during a search for what?

Alien messages. The reading stood out because it was strong, narrow and close to the natural frequency of hydrogen, the channel physicists had guessed another civilisation might use.

The winged centaur-archer behind Sagittarius first appeared in the sky lore of which ancient region?

Mesopotamia. Its astronomers saw the archer as the bow-armed warrior god Pabilsag; the Greeks borrowed the figure, which may be why their own myths never settled on who he was.

The satyr Crotus, one mythical candidate for Sagittarius, is said to have invented archery and which custom of audiences?

Applause. He lived among the Muses and clapped so heartily whenever they sang that, in the myth, they asked Zeus to set him among the stars.

How do astronomers pronounce the name of the radio source Sagittarius A*?

A-star. Robert Brown, who had helped discover the tiny, intense point inside the larger region Sagittarius A, named it in 1982, borrowing the asterisk physicists put on an excited atom.

Which wise centaur of Greek myth is sometimes identified with the archer of Sagittarius?

Chiron. Star-lore writers disagree: many say the wise centaur is really the southern constellation Centaurus, and that Sagittarius, with his drawn bow, is someone else entirely.

Some ancient writers said Sagittarius was no centaur but a satyr named Crotus, the son of which god?

Pan. The Roman writer Hyginus named him as the father, with Eupheme, nurse of the Muses, as the mother, which is why he lived among the nine goddesses on Mount Helicon.

In Greek myth the wise centaur linked to Sagittarius was half horse because which Titan fathered him in a stallion's shape?

Cronus. In Apollonius's telling he was caught with the nymph Philyra by his wife Rhea and bolted in the form of a long-maned stallion; the child was born half horse.

The wise centaur linked to Sagittarius raised which future god and taught him the art of healing?

Asclepius. He grew so skilled that he began raising the dead, and Zeus struck him down with a thunderbolt for it.

The wise centaur linked to Sagittarius was fatally wounded by an arrow tipped with the blood of which monster?

The Hydra. Heracles had poisoned his arrows with the monster's blood after killing it, and in most tellings one of them struck his old teacher by accident.

Whose release from punishment was made possible when the wise centaur linked to Sagittarius gave up his immortality?

Prometheus. In Apollodorus's telling, Heracles offered Zeus the wounded centaur, who was in such pain that he was willing to die, in exchange for the chained Titan's freedom.

Sagittarius marks the Sun's position at which annual event?

The December solstice. The Sun reaches the southernmost point of its yearly path there, so for northern stargazers Sagittarius rides about as low in the sky as the midwinter Sun does.

Greek stargazers pictured the small ring of stars beneath the forefeet of Sagittarius as what?

A wreath. The Roman writer Hyginus passed on the idea that the archer had tossed it off 'as by one at play'; the ring is now a constellation of its own, Corona Australis, the Southern Crown.

Which gemstone is a traditional birthstone for December, when many Sagittarians are born?

Turquoise. Its name comes from the Old French for 'Turkish stone', because the gem first reached Europe from, or by way of, Turkish lands.

Between which two zodiac constellations does Sagittarius lie?

Scorpius and Capricornus. The zodiac's constellations line up in the same order as its signs, so the scorpion sits just ahead of the archer, to the west, and the sea-goat just behind.

From which of these cities do the brightest stars of Sagittarius pass almost directly overhead?

Sydney. The constellation's brightest star, Kaus Australis, crosses within a degree of the point straight overhead there, yet from Reykjavik it never rises at all.

Which two signs belong to the same element as Sagittarius?

Aries and Leo. The three sit exactly four signs apart from one another, forming an equal-sided triangle on the zodiac wheel that astrologers call a trigon, or triplicity.

Which second-century astronomer listed Sagittarius among his 48 constellations?

Ptolemy. His catalogue, the Almagest, stayed the basic guide for Islamic and European astronomers until about the start of the 17th century, well over a thousand years later.

Light reaching us today from Sagittarius A* set out about 27,000 years ago, during which period?

The last Ice Age. Sagittarius A* lies about 27,000 light-years away, so its famous 2022 photograph shows it as it was when much of northern Europe and North America lay under ice.

The Omega Nebula in Sagittarius is listed as M17 in the catalogue of which French comet hunter?

Charles Messier. He listed fuzzy objects like this one so that fellow comet hunters would stop wasting time on them; a Swiss astronomer, de Chéseaux, had in fact spotted it first.