Aldebaran in the birth chart: the royal star in the eye of Taurus

Star data

sefstars catalogue, Swiss Ephemeris 2.10.03.

Aldebaran is the bright orange star in the eye of the Bull and one of the four royal stars of astrological tradition. Ptolemy gave it the nature of Mars alone, and astrologers link it with courage and directness. Although it belongs to the constellation Taurus, in the tropical zodiac it now stands in the first third of Gemini.

In the sky

Aldebaran is an orange giant, and its warm tint is visible to the naked eye. In the figure of Taurus it marks the eye of the Bull.

It lies close enough to the ecliptic for the Moon to pass in front of it from time to time, so a conjunction with Aldebaran by zodiacal degree is also a close meeting in the sky. These occultations come in series lasting a few years: the last one ended in 2018, and the next begins in 2033. Between series the Moon still passes close by every month, only slightly above or below the star. On the other side of the zodiac Antares sits almost exactly opposite: the two stars are very nearly 180° apart, and a planet conjunct one is opposite the other. The axis as a whole is covered on the Antares page.

What kind of star it is

Aldebaran is about 65 light-years away. Its mass is only slightly above the Sun's, by about a sixth, but it is an older star that has expanded into a giant some 44 times wider than the Sun. Its cool surface is what gives it the orange colour. In brightness it ranks roughly fourteenth among the stars of the night sky.

To the eye Aldebaran seems to belong to the Hyades, the V-shaped cluster that outlines the Bull's face. It does not. The cluster lies well behind it, and Aldebaran only happens to sit on the same line of sight, much nearer to us. The ancient image of the eye set in the face of the Bull is therefore a matter of perspective.

Finding it from Ukraine

Aldebaran is a star of winter evenings. It appears in the east in late autumn, is best placed from December to February, and drops into the western dusk in spring. The usual guide is Orion's belt: extend the line of its three stars up and to the right, and the first bright orange star is Aldebaran. Continue the same line and you reach the Pleiades.

From the latitude of Kyiv the star rises to about 55° above the southern horizon, high enough to be seen from any town. The Sun passes it at the end of May, and for a few weeks around that date Aldebaran is hidden in the Sun's glare.

The name

The name comes from Arabic and means "the follower". Aldebaran follows the Pleiades, the star cluster in the same constellation, as they move across the sky. The name describes a place in the sky, not a temperament.

At first the Arabic name covered the whole group of the Hyades and only later narrowed to the brightest of them. The Latin name Parilicium went the same way: it was used for all the Hyades and later for Aldebaran alone. The title "the Bull's eye" exists in Greek, Arabic and Latin alike: Omma Boos, Ain al-Thaur and Oculus Tauri. Babylonian astronomers placed it in a star group whose name Allen gives as "the Furrow of Heaven", and, again according to Allen, called the star itself "the Leading Star of Stars". Aldebaran is the name approved by the International Astronomical Union.

The Hyades themselves have a myth. Ovid in the Fasti describes the face of Taurus shining with seven fires that Greek sailors called the Hyades, from their word for rain, and Hyginus makes them daughters of Atlas, placed between the Bull's horns. Hyginus also explains the name: they bring rain when they rise.

Nature according to Ptolemy

In the Tetrabiblos Ptolemy describes the bright star in the Bull's eye as being of the nature of Mars. Unlike Regulus or Antares, Aldebaran has no second planet in its description, so its nature here is unmixed.

Mars stands for drive, courage, directness and the readiness to meet resistance head-on. Tradition reads Aldebaran as this energy in a fairly open form: a person who acts, takes responsibility and speaks plainly. Older authors gave it a turbulent reputation, which belongs to the history of the tradition. In the Renaissance it was still counted among the strongest stars. In the list of fifteen Behenian stars in Cornelius Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy it comes third, after the head of Algol and the Pleiades, the cluster its name says it follows, and it is written in a garbled form of the Arabic name.

Conjunctions with planets and angles

Aldebaran is read by conjunction with a planet or an angle, within an orb of about 1°. The star then lends its Mars colour to that planet:

• Aldebaran on the Ascendant. The angle of personal manner takes on the star's directness: a person who comes across as resolute and frank, who acts rather than waits and does not hide where they stand.
• Aldebaran with Mercury. Thinking and speech pick up the same quality: a sharp, outspoken mind, a taste for argument, and the inclination to say what one thinks even when it is uncomfortable. The rest of Mercury's condition decides whether this reads as clarity or as bluntness.

Precession and the sign

Like every star, Aldebaran drifts slowly along the zodiac (precession). It left the sign of Taurus about seven centuries ago and now stands in the first third of Gemini, even though it is still the eye of the Bull in the constellation. The difference between sign and constellation is the most common source of confusion with this star: older descriptions that speak of Aldebaran "in Taurus" refer to the constellation or to a much earlier epoch. For a chart, the star's position for the year of birth is what counts.

In celebrity charts

Conjunctions within 1° to the planets from the Sun to Saturn and to the chart angles.

• Marion Cotillard: MC, orb 0°22′
• Billie Eilish: Saturn, orb 0°26′
• Joe Biden: Saturn, orb 0°57′

Find fixed stars in your chart