Fixed Stars in Astrology: Regulus, Spica Degrees 2026

On 1 January 2026, Regulus stands at 0°11′ Virgo in the tropical zodiac of Western astrology and at 5°58′ Simha (Leo) in the Lahiri zodiac this site uses. Spica stands at 24°12′ Libra tropical and 29°59′ Kanya (Virgo) in Lahiri, a hair short of the Virgo–Libra line. The table below gives the same pair of figures for 32 bright stars.

A star’s “degree” here is its apparent ecliptic longitude of date, seen from the Earth’s centre at midnight IST on 1 January. The positions were computed with the JPL DE421 ephemeris from each star’s catalogue coordinates and proper motion, as given in its English Wikipedia entry (mostly the 2007 Hipparcos re-reduction by van Leeuwen). The Lahiri value is the tropical one minus the site’s ayanamsa, 24.2201° on that date. The list of stars is this page’s choice: astrological writers keep lists of very different lengths, and every count below is a count of this list only.

All 32 Fixed Stars: Tropical and Lahiri Degrees for 2026

Sorted by tropical longitude, from the start of Aries. The nakshatra column is the 13°20′ division the Lahiri longitude falls in. Latitude is the star’s distance north (+) or south (−) of the ecliptic.

Seven of the 32 carry the same sign name in both zodiacs (Algol, Polaris, Betelgeuse, Procyon, Arcturus, Shaula and Scheat); each of them sits late enough in its tropical sign that subtracting about 24° leaves it in the same sign. Every other star is one sign further on in the tropical column than in the Lahiri one. The Lahiri ayanamsa page explains where that 24° comes from and how the site computes it.

Why Tropical Degrees Drift About 1.4° a Century

The tropical zodiac is counted from the March equinox point, and that point slides slowly backwards along the ecliptic against the stars (the precession of the equinoxes). So every star’s tropical longitude grows. Between the 1 January 1950 and 1 January 2050 samples the growth runs from 1.379° (Sirius) to 1.426° (Achernar), an average of 1.40°, which is one degree in about 71 years. The small spread between stars reflects, among smaller effects, each star’s own slow motion across the sky.

At that pace a star takes about 2,130 years to cross a whole sign, but with 32 stars on the list a few crossings land inside a single century. In the yearly samples there are exactly three, all in the tropical zodiac: Alcyone moved from Taurus into Gemini between the 2000 and 2001 samples, Regulus from Leo into Virgo between 2011 and 2012, and Scheat will move from Pisces into Aries between the 2044 and 2045 samples. The data are yearly, so this page gives no finer date for any of them.

In the Lahiri zodiac the same stars barely move. The ayanamsa itself grows by 1.397° over the same century, at the rate of general precession, and subtracting it takes almost all of the drift out. The largest change any star shows in Lahiri from 1950 to 2050 is 0.029° (Achernar), and 23 of the 32 move less than 0.01°, so the sidereal residual is at least 47 times smaller than the tropical drift. No star on the list changes Lahiri sign in any yearly sample of the century. That is the arithmetic meaning of a “sidereal” zodiac: its zero point is tied to the stars, so the stars stay put in it. The Vedic Sun sign dates page shows the other side of this, the sidereal sign dates drifting later through the calendar.

Regulus in 2026: Tropical Virgo, Lahiri Leo

Regulus sits 0.47° from the ecliptic (only Zubenelgenubi on the list sits closer), so its zodiac degree is close to the star’s own place in the sky. Its tropical longitude crossed 150°, the Leo–Virgo line, between the 1 January 2011 and 2012 samples. On 1 January 2026 it is 0.20° into Virgo, and on 1 January 2027 it will be at 0°12′ Virgo. Anyone quoting “Regulus in Leo” from an older Western table is reading a position that no longer holds in the tropical zodiac.

In Lahiri the same star is at 5°58′ Simha (Leo), well inside the sign, and it stays there for the whole 1950–2050 span. It also falls in the first nakshatra of that sign, Magha, the nakshatra the Basham table identifies it with (see below).

Spica and the Lahiri Anchor

Lahiri’s ayanamsa is defined from Spica, the star called Chitra in Jyotish, by placing it at 180°, the middle of the Chitra nakshatra (Virgo 23°20′ – Libra 6°40′). The ayanamsa page sets out that definition. Computed independently here, from Spica’s own catalogue position, the 2026 sidereal longitude comes out at 179.9843°, which is 57″ (arcseconds) short of 180°. In the 1950 sample the gap is 62″, and in 2050 it will be 48″.

The gap has a plain source. The site’s ayanamsa formula is a fixed starting value at J2000 plus a smooth precession term, while the star’s computed position is apparent: it carries Spica’s own motion, the nodding of the Earth’s axis (nutation) and the shift caused by the Earth’s orbital speed (aberration), none of which the formula follows. The two still agree to well under a tenth of a degree throughout the century, so Spica stays in Chitra and in sidereal Kanya (Virgo), just short of Tula.

Arcturus shows how fine that line is. Its tropical longitude is only 0.39° past Spica’s, but it lies 30.7° north of the ecliptic, and its Lahiri value, 0°22′ Tula (Libra), is already across the line.

The Four Royal Stars

“Royal stars” is a name given to four bright stars, Aldebaran, Regulus, Antares and Fomalhaut, which lie in the constellations Taurus, Leo, Scorpius and Piscis Austrinus. The longer label “royal stars of Persia” was already being doubted in 1945, when George A. Davis published a paper in Popular Astronomy titled “The so-called royal stars of Persia”; this page makes no claim about the label’s origin. Their 2026 positions:

In longitude the four are not evenly spaced: the gaps run from 80.0° (Aldebaran to Regulus) to 99.9° (Regulus to Antares). One pair is close to exactly opposite, though. Aldebaran and Antares are 180° apart to within 0.04°, while Regulus and Fomalhaut are 184.0° apart. In Lahiri the first three fall in the signs named after their constellations, Vrishabha, Simha and Vrishchika; Fomalhaut, whose constellation has no sign of the same name, falls in Kumbha. In the tropical zodiac all four are one sign further on.

Nakshatra Stars: Which Fall Inside Their Own Span

A. L. Basham’s table of the nakshatras in The Wonder That Was India (1954), as reproduced in English Wikipedia’s Nakshatra article, names the stars of each lunar mansion. Seventeen of those stars are on this page’s list (for Krittika the table names the Pleiades; Alcyone, the cluster’s brightest star, stands in for it). Each nakshatra in the site’s zodiac is an equal 13°20′ arc, so the question is simple arithmetic: does the star’s 2026 Lahiri longitude fall inside the arc that carries its name?

Twelve of the seventeen fall inside their own span and five do not: Betelgeuse, Arcturus, Antares, Altair and Scheat. The nearest miss is Antares, 0.76° short of Jyeshtha, and the widest is Arcturus, 6.29° short of Swati. Three of the five (Arcturus, Altair and Scheat) lie more than 25° off the ecliptic. The misses are what equal arcs produce: the star groups are spaced unevenly around the sky, and 27 equal divisions cannot follow every one of them. None of the seventeen crosses into or out of its named span between 1950 and 2050. The nakshatra hub lists every span, and the Chitra page covers the nakshatra Spica anchors.

Latitude: Why Polaris Has a Zodiac Degree

A zodiac degree is a projection: drop a line from the star straight down to the ecliptic, and the degree is where it lands. For a star near the ecliptic that point is close to the star itself. For a star far from it the degree says much less. The list runs from Polaris at +66.1° to Canopus at −75.8°. Only six lie within 5° of the ecliptic (Zubenelgenubi, Regulus, Spica, Deneb Algedi, Alcyone and Antares), and ten lie 30° or more away from it, among them Sirius (−39.6°), Canopus (−75.8°), Vega (+61.7°) and Polaris.

So Polaris, the pole star, gets a tropical degree of 28°56′ Gemini and a Lahiri degree of 4°43′ Mithuna (Gemini), even though it sits nowhere near the band of the zodiac. The same goes for Canopus at 15°20′ Cancer. This page uses longitude alone, as a choice, and prints the latitude beside it so each row can be judged; writers who work with fixed stars differ on how far from the ecliptic a star may lie and still be given a degree. The Ophiuchus page covers the related point that constellations and signs are different things.

What This Page Does Not Give

There is no interpretation here of any star, Algol and Regulus included, for anyone’s chart: no nature, no effect, no reading of a planet or angle that lands on one. Those come from interpretive traditions, and a longitude table has no way to test any of them. The page also says nothing about when a star can be seen or rises with the Sun, gives no conjunction orb, and gives no date for a sign change finer than the yearly samples above.

In Brief

• Regulus, 1 January 2026: 0°11′ Virgo tropical, 5°58′ Simha (Leo) Lahiri
• Spica: 24°12′ Libra tropical, 179.9843° Lahiri, 57″ short of the 180° anchor
• Drift: 1.38° to 1.43° a century in tropical, at most 0.029° in Lahiri
• Sign changes 1950–2050: Alcyone into Gemini (2001), Regulus into Virgo (2012) and Scheat into Aries (2045), all tropical
• Royal stars: Aldebaran and Antares within 0.04° of opposite; the four gaps 80° to 100°
• Nakshatra stars: twelve of seventeen inside their own span; Betelgeuse, Arcturus, Antares, Altair and Scheat outside