Where the zodiac is in the sky, who divided it into twelve, and why the signs no longer sit on their constellations: four rounds, each answer with its reason.
Read the full guide
Astrology trivia questions and answers, as history
Babylon, Egypt and Greece and From the Middle Ages on follow astrology as a subject of history: the star catalog the zodiac drew on, where horoscopes first appeared, the astrolabe and the dustboard.
The astronomy rounds
The belt in the sky covers the ecliptic, the thirteenth constellation on it and how long the Sun stays in a sign. Precession and the drifting signs asks who found the drift and how fast it runs.
Tips
The belt in the sky is the place to start; Precession and the drifting signs is for an astronomy club.
Questions and answers
Does this quiz say what my sign means?
No. It makes no claim about anyone's character or future. Every question is astronomy or dated history of the zodiac, checked in an encyclopedia article.
What are some easy zodiac trivia questions?
The zodiac lies to either side of which line? The zodiac band holds the paths of which bodies? With what are the names of the signs mostly associated today? The answers are the ecliptic, the planets and horoscopic astrology.
Why is there talk of a thirteenth sign?
Because the ecliptic also crosses the constellation Ophiuchus, between Scorpius and Sagittarius. The signs are twelve equal divisions of the circle, an abstraction from the constellations, so the count of signs stays at twelve.
How were the answers checked?
Each was read on October 3, 2026 in the English Wikipedia article Zodiac, which every question links. What a sign is said to mean for a person is left out.
Besides the twelve zodiac constellations, the ecliptic passes through one more. Which?Answer: Ophiuchus. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
How does modern astronomy number the degrees of celestial longitude?Answer: Continuously from 0° to 360°. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
How wide is the band called the "zodiac of the Moon", measured to either side of the ecliptic?Answer: 5 degrees. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
In which sign does the Sun spend the longest, about 31.4 days?Answer: Cancer. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
On average, about how long does the Sun stay in each sign?Answer: 30.43 days. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
What is the ecliptic?Answer: The apparent path of the Sun across the sky over a year. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
The word zodiac can also mean the band of sky that holds the paths of which bodies?Answer: The planets. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
The zodiac is a belt of sky that lies about 8 degrees to either side of which line?Answer: The ecliptic. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
The zodiac is still the basis of which coordinate system used in astronomy?Answer: The ecliptic coordinate system. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
The zodiacal light takes its name from the zodiac. How much of the night sky does it cover?Answer: The entire night sky. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
Babylon, Egypt and Greece 11
A full list of the 36 Egyptian decans was placed in the tomb of which pharaoh?Answer: Seti I. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
Babylonian astronomers cut the ecliptic into 12 equal signs by analogy with what?Answer: Twelve schematic months of 30 days. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
Babylonian astronomers measured the place of a planet against a set of stars near the ecliptic. What are those stars called?Answer: Normal stars. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
The earliest surviving Greek text to use twelve signs of 30 degrees is the Anaphoricus. Who wrote it?Answer: Hypsicles of Alexandria. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
Into which other tradition, besides Greek astronomy, did the Babylonian zodiac pass by the 2nd century BC?Answer: The Hindu zodiac. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
Modern calculations place the introduction of the zodiac between 409 and 398 BC. Under whose rule was Babylon then?Answer: Persian rule. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
Through which Greek astronomer did the Babylonian star catalogs enter Greek astronomy in the 4th century BC?Answer: Eudoxus of Cnidus. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
To what did the Greek root of the name "zodiac" refer?Answer: Little animals. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
Where did horoscopic astrology first appear?Answer: Ptolemaic Egypt. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
Which Babylonian star catalog, compiled around 1000 BC, did the zodiac draw on?Answer: MUL.APIN. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
The zodiac was developed in Babylonia some 2,500 years ago. During which "age" was that?Answer: The Age of Aries. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
Precession and the drifting signs 10
Between 1797 and 2043 the vernal equinox always falls on one of two dates. Which?Answer: March 20 or 21. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
If constellations merely touched by the paths of the planets are counted, how many "constellations of the zodiac" can there be?Answer: Up to 25. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
In which 2nd-century book does Ptolemy describe precession?Answer: The Almagest. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
Precession shifts the equinox points against the stars by one degree in about how long?Answer: 72 years. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
The tropical zodiac is divided at the points where the ecliptic crosses which other circle?Answer: The equator. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
The tropical zodiac takes its name from the Greek "trópos". What does trópos mean?Answer: Turn. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
Which 12th-century Indian treatise gives equations for measuring precession?Answer: Siddhanta Shiromani. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
Which Greek astronomer of the 1st century BC described the vernal point as the first degree of the zodiac?Answer: Geminus of Rhodes. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
Who is credited with discovering the precession of the equinoxes, around 130 BC?Answer: Hipparchus. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
Zodiac signs each cover exactly a twelfth of the circle. What are they an abstraction from?Answer: The physical constellations. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
From the Middle Ages on 10
According to the historian Montucla, the Hindu zodiac came from the Greek one by way of which Greek empire?Answer: Bactria. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
At which French cathedral did the glass maker André Robin make zodiac windows after a fire in 1451?Answer: Angers Cathedral. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
By which era was the zodiac in general use, handed down from Babylon through Hellenistic astronomy?Answer: The Roman era. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
How many constellations are pictured in Al-Sufi's Book of Fixed Stars?Answer: 48. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
In which century did astrology emerge as a distinct discipline in the Islamic world?Answer: The 8th century. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
What is the old name for the kind of astrology built on the positions of the planets at a person's birth?Answer: Genethlialogy. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
What was the takht, used in medieval calculations of the planets?Answer: A dustboard. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
Which instrument did a medieval astrologer use to find the position of the Sun?Answer: An astrolabe. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
Which yearly publication was still using the signs as astronomical coordinates in 1767?Answer: The Nautical Almanac. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
With what are the names of the twelve signs mostly associated today?Answer: Horoscopic astrology. Source: Wikipedia: Zodiac
How this list was compiled
Written for this site; nothing was copied from another list. Questions and wrong choices are our own. Each explanation restates, in our own sentences, a fact from the English Wikipedia article named and linked beside the question (https://en.wikipedia.org, text under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license): Zodiac. The text of each article was fetched on October 2 or 3, 2026, and on October 3, 2026 the passage that states each fact was read in it before the question was kept. The questions are about the sky and the history of the zodiac. Left out on purpose: what any sign is said to mean for a person, predictions, compatibility, and what other trivia sets on this site already ask (the first and last signs, the one sign that is an object, the water-bearer, the twins, the 30 degrees of a sign, the Babylonian origin in plain form, the animals of the Chinese zodiac). Levels are our estimate: easy is fair for any table, medium suits people who know the subject, hard will stump most tables. Each question also carries the date its article was read (checkedOn). Licence: own work