August 22 Zodiac Sign: Leo or Virgo?

August 22 is a cusp birthday: in 29 of the 87 years from 1940 to 2026 the Sun entered Virgo during August 22 (US Eastern Time), so people born that day are Leo before the change time and Virgo after it; in 58 years the change came later and the whole day was Leo. Your sign depends on the year and time of birth — see the table. Pacific Time: change during the day in 42 years, whole day Virgo in 0, whole day Leo in 45.

August 22 at a glance

• Possible Sun signs: Leo before the change, Virgo after
• Elements: Fire (Leo), Earth (Virgo)
• Modalities: Fixed (Leo), Mutable (Virgo)
• Rulers: Sun (Leo), Mercury (Virgo)
• Data: NASA JPL Horizons, 1940–2030

A blank beside the year means the whole of August 22 was Leo on that coast; a listed time is the cutoff, with births before it Leo and births at or after it Virgo. Use the Eastern or the Pacific reading, whichever matches the coast where the birth took place. The coasts do not always match. Take 1973: the crossing fell at 23:53 PDT on August 22 for Los Angeles but at 02:53 EDT on August 23 for New York, and that year the Pacific clock alone has a time. Central and Mountain births have no clock in this table; the birth chart below handles them. For the date's place in the month, see August zodiac signs.

Between 1940 and 1959, Eastern clocks never caught the change on August 22: in each of those birth years Virgo began on the 23rd. Los Angeles caught it late in the evening in 1940, 1944, 1948, 1952 and 1956, then in 1973, 1977, 1981, 1985, 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2018; in all of these New York kept a Leo day to midnight. The West Coast-only crossings fall between 21:09 PDT (2018) and 23:53 PDT (1973), and the 1944 entry, 23:46 PWT, is War Time, the extra hour US clocks carried from February 9, 1942 to September 30, 1945. On the Eastern side, the changes that did land on August 22 run from 10:55 EDT (2024) to 23:46 EDT (1989). Put the other way, an August 22 birth before 10:55 Eastern or 07:55 Pacific time, the two 2024 change times, was Leo for all birth years 1940–2026; in the computed future row for 2028 the change comes even sooner, at 10:01 EDT.

Two cases can make the hour of birth the deciding detail: a time printed for your coast, or a birthplace with no column of its own. Astrolivo's birth chart takes the date, the clock hour and the birth city, and with those three you can check your Sun sign with your birth time, free and without creating an account. Without an hour, the chart is calculated for 12:00 noon and marked as such.

Instead of relying on a single noon position, the calculator checks for any sign changes across your entire local birth date. If the Sun, the Moon, or another planet changes sign during that local day, the result shows each possible sign for that day rather than guessing a single one.

Astrology is an interpretive tradition, not a scientifically validated method; for August 22 it offers two sets of labels, and the year of birth plus the hour on the local clock settle which set a person's Sun takes.

A birth that comes before the change, or any August 22 birth in a year when Virgo held off until the 23rd, belongs to Leo. Leo counts as a Fire sign, and hot, dry and ardent are the words the tradition attaches to Fire. Polarity puts Leo with the positive signs, the ones astrology also calls yang or expressive. Leo is ruled by the Sun. The sign's own guide is the Leo zodiac sign page.

Once Virgo has arrived, an August 22 birth is Virgo's. Earth, Virgo's element, carries the classical qualities heavy, cold and dry. Virgo takes the negative polarity that astrology gives every even-numbered sign, a side it also labels passive or receptive. Its ruling planet is Mercury, connected in astrology with mentality and with gathering information. Virgo is covered in full on the Virgo zodiac sign page.

FAQ

Why is August 22 called a cusp birthday? Because in many years Virgo replaces Leo partway through it. The label is calendar shorthand, nothing more: the Sun occupies one sign at any instant, so a birth lands in Leo or in Virgo depending on whether it came before or after that year's change on the local clock.

What time does the Sun change sign on August 22? Between late morning and the last quarter hour before midnight on Eastern clocks, depending on the year. For birth years 1940–2026, the August 22 change fell no earlier than 10:55 EDT (2024) and no later than 23:46 EDT (1989) on Eastern clocks, and between 07:55 PDT (2024) and 23:53 PDT (1973) on Pacific ones. Between 1940 and 1959, Eastern clocks never show it on this date, and Pacific clocks show it only late at night, at 21:15 PDT (1956) or later; whenever August 22 passed without a change, on either coast, the Sun entered Virgo on August 23.

How this page was made

Each year's Virgo ingress, 1940–2030, is a NASA JPL Horizons result, shown in New York and Los Angeles local time by way of the IANA tz database, wartime and daylight saving shifts included. Wikipedia is the source for the sign material: "Astrological sign" and "Astrology and the classical elements" for element qualities, polarity and rulers, "Planets in astrology" for Mercury, and "Astrology and science" for the note on scientific status. Sign meanings appear here only in the form the tradition hands them down, not as findings; the text was prepared, and checked sentence by sentence against those sources, by the Astrolivo editorial team.