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50 free Leo trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Leo trivia quiz covers the fifth sign of the zodiac from three sides. The astrology questions ask about the lion's dates, its Sun rulership, fire element and fixed modality, its opposite sign and its polarity, and where the Sun really sits when horoscopes say Leo. The astronomy questions turn to the constellation: Regulus the little king that the Moon keeps hiding, Denebola on the tail, the Sickle asterism, the nearby flare star Wolf 359, R Leonis, Caffau's ancient star, the Leo Triplet of galaxies, the Leo Ring, and the Leonid meteor storms that made 1833 a night nobody in America forgot. The mythology is Heracles' first labour: the invulnerable Nemean lion, the blocked cave, the strangling, the claw that skinned it and the king who hid in a bronze jar afterwards. There are also questions on the Babylonian Great Lion, the Egyptian Knem and the Nile flood, Tutankhamun's throne, and the epithets Ovid and Manilius gave the constellation. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on each question, so the quiz works for a Leo birthday, a pub round or a stargazing night. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our Zodiac, Astrology and Planets quizzes for more.
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Q 01What animal does the sign Leo represent?
A lion
Leo is simply Latin for lion; the Greeks called it Leon.
Q 02Leo is which sign in the order of the zodiac?
5th
It follows Cancer and precedes Virgo, at the height of the northern summer.
Q 03Which celestial body is the traditional ruler of Leo?
The Sun
The Sun and Moon each rule one sign; the Moon takes Cancer, the sign just before Leo.
Q 04Leo belongs to which classical element?
Fire
The other fire signs are Aries and Sagittarius.
Q 05What is Leo's modality in astrology?
Fixed
Fixed signs fall in the middle of a season; Leo is the fixed sign of summer.
Q 06Which sign sits opposite Leo on the zodiac wheel?
Aquarius
Both are fixed signs; the water-bearer and the lion face each other across the chart.
Q 07Leo spans which degrees of celestial longitude?
120th to 150th
Each sign gets exactly 30 degrees, counted from the spring equinox point in Aries.
Q 08In tropical astrology the Sun is in Leo from about July 23 to which date?
August 22
The Sun only reaches the actual constellation Leo around August 10, and stays until mid-September.
Q 09Astronomically, when does the Sun really pass through the constellation Leo (as of 2002)?
August 10 to September 16
Precession has shifted the constellations roughly one sign away from the tropical dates over two millennia.
Q 10Which two constellations flank Leo in the zodiac?
Cancer and Virgo
The crab is to its west and the maiden to its east.
Q 11What is the name of the asterism of six stars that forms the lion's head, resembling a backwards question mark?
The Sickle
Regulus is the dot at the bottom of the question mark.
Q 12Which is the brightest star in Leo?
Regulus
It is a four-star system about 79 light-years away, spinning so fast it is squashed into an oblate shape.
Q 13What does the Latin name of Leo's brightest star, Alpha Leonis, mean?
Little king
Copernicus is credited with the name; the Babylonians already called it the King Star.
Alpha Leonis lies unusually close to the ecliptic, so it is regularly hidden by which body?
Q 21What kind of object is Wolf 359, prone to sudden bursts of brightness?
A flare star
Its surface magnetic field is hundreds of times stronger than the Sun's.
Q 22R Leonis, a red giant in Leo, is which type of pulsating star?
A Mira variable
It swings between magnitude 10 and about 6 over roughly 310 days, sometimes brightening to naked-eye visibility.
Q 23Caffau's star in Leo is remarkable for having the lowest known level of what?
Metallicity
At about 13 billion years old it is one of the oldest stars in the Galaxy, formed before heavier elements were common.
The Moon
It sits under half a degree from the ecliptic, closer than any other bright star, and gets occulted in spates every 9.3 years.
Q 15Which planet last occulted Alpha Leonis, in 1959, and will do so again in 2044?
Venus
No other planet will pass in front of the star for millennia because of where their orbital nodes lie.
Q 16Roughly how far away is Alpha Leonis?
79 light-years
Its light left it around the time the Second World War was ending, give or take a few years.
Q 17Which star marks the lion's tail, its Arabic-derived name meaning exactly that?
Denebola
Deneb in Cygnus has the same root: it is the swan's tail.
Q 18How far from the Sun is Beta Leonis, the lion's tail star?
36 light-years
It is a hot A-type star with about 15 times the Sun's luminosity.
Q 19Which faint red dwarf in Leo is one of the closest stars to the Sun?
Wolf 359
Star Trek fans know it as the site of a disastrous battle with the Borg.
Q 20In which fictional universe is Wolf 359 the site of a famous battle?
Star Trek
Starfleet lost 39 ships to a single Borg cube there in The Next Generation.
Q 24The Leo Triplet is a group of what?
Galaxies
M65, M66 and NGC 3628 are gravitationally tugging stars off one another about 37 million light-years away.
Q 25The Leo Ring, a vast intergalactic cloud in the constellation, is made of what?
Hydrogen and helium gas
It is a primordial gas cloud that has somehow never collapsed into stars.
Q 26NGC 2903, a barred spiral in Leo found by Herschel in 1784, is often compared to which galaxy?
The Milky Way
It is similar in size and shape to our own galaxy and lies about 25 million light-years away.
Q 27The Huge-LQG, found in Leo, is what kind of structure?
A large quasar group
It is the second-largest structure known in the observable universe.
Q 28Which group of stars was cut away from the tuft of the lion's tail to form a separate constellation?
Coma Berenices
Tycho Brahe formalised the split in 1602, though the Greeks and Romans had already called it Berenice's Hair.
Q 29The Leonid meteor shower is associated with which comet?
Tempel–Tuttle
Because the comet orbits backwards relative to Earth, Leonids hit the atmosphere at 70 km/s, the fastest of any annual shower.
Q 30Roughly how often do the Leonids produce a full meteor storm?
Every 33 years
Storm years can exceed 1,000 meteors an hour; 1966 topped 40 per second.