August 23 Zodiac Sign: Leo or Virgo?

August 23 is a cusp birthday: in 58 of the 87 years from 1940 to 2026 the Sun entered Virgo during August 23 (US Eastern Time), so people born that day are Leo before the change time and Virgo after it; in 29 years the change came earlier and the whole day was Virgo. Your sign depends on the year and time of birth — see the table. Pacific Time: change during the day in 45 years, whole day Virgo in 42, whole day Leo in 0.

August 23 at a glance

• Possible Sun signs: Leo until the change, Virgo from it
• Elements: Leo, Fire; Virgo, Earth
• Modalities: Leo, Fixed; Virgo, Mutable
• Rulers: Leo, the Sun; Virgo, Mercury
• Data: NASA JPL Horizons, 1940–2030

Rows go by year. Read across to the Eastern time for an East Coast birth or to the Pacific time for a West Coast one. A printed time marks where Leo's share of the date stops and Virgo's begins; a blank means Virgo was in place before midnight on that coast and had the date to itself. Take 1947: the Sun crossed at 20:09 EDT, which Los Angeles, on standard time, read as 16:09 PST, and because 8 p.m. Eastern had passed, the UTC column dates that crossing August 24. Births in the Central and Mountain zones have no clock of their own in the table; the birth chart takes care of those. To see August 23 next to the other August dates, visit August zodiac signs.

On neither Eastern nor Pacific clocks did Leo keep August 23 to midnight in 1940–2030. The earliest change on August 23 itself came in 2018, nine minutes after midnight Eastern (00:09 EDT); the 2018 Pacific entry is blank because that moment, 21:09 PDT by Los Angeles time, came before the West Coast's August 23 began. The 1942–1944 rows show War Time; the 1945 row shows EPT and PPT, the same added hour under its Peace Time name from August 14 until it ended on September 30, 1945. Like 1947, the 1941, 1946 and 1949 rows put four hours, not three, between the two coasts. Among birth years the change last fell on August 23 in 2023, at 05:01 EDT; 2024–2026 were Virgo from midnight on both coasts, and of the computed years only 2027 has a change, at 04:14 EDT.

If the birth coast's clock has a change time for that year, the hour of birth settles the sign, and Central or Mountain births need the birth chart as well. Enter the full birth date, the birth city and the hour there, and the chart lets you check your Sun sign with your birth time; no fee is charged and no account is needed. When no hour is given, 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.

Modality, in astrology, records where a sign falls within its season. Both August 23 candidates are northern summer signs (winter signs south of the equator): Leo in the middle of the three, Virgo at the end.

Leo keeps August 23 births up to the crossing minute. Fixed is astrology's word for its middle position, and the Sun is its ruling body. What the tradition says about Leo beyond its ruler fills the Leo zodiac sign page.

Virgo has every birth from the crossing minute on, plus the entire day in years like 2024, when the crossing came on August 22. That last-of-three position is called Mutable. On the planet side, Virgo answers to Mercury, whose action astrology pictures as pulling things apart and reassembling them. Astrology is an interpretive tradition, not a scientifically validated method; a place in a season and a ruling planet are its categories, not traits measured in anyone. Everything else about Virgo is collected on the Virgo zodiac sign page.

FAQ

Can two August 23 cusp birthdays have different Sun signs? Yes. "Cusp" is popular shorthand for a date like this, not a sign of its own: each birth has the Sun in Leo or in Virgo, never a blend, and which one depends on the year and on the local time of birth. A 10 a.m. New York birth in 1975, before that year's 14:24 EDT crossing, was Leo; at the same hour in 1976 it was Virgo, because that year the crossing had come before August 23 began.

What is the zodiac sign for August 24? Virgo, every year 1940–2030, with Eastern and Pacific clocks in agreement. No crossing reached later into August 23 than the one in 1943, at 20:55 EWT (17:55 PWT), so in both zones August 24 began with the Sun already in Virgo.

How this page was made

Solar positions for 1940–2030 are NASA JPL Horizons output; each Virgo crossing was then read off in Eastern and Pacific local time through the IANA tz database, counting the 1942–1945 extra hour. Wikipedia's "Triplicity" and "Astrological sign" cover season positions and rulers, its "Planets in astrology" what Mercury stands for, and its "Astrology and science" the scientific-status sentence. Astrolivo's editorial team prepared all of it and matched it claim by claim to those sources; sign meanings appear as tradition rather than as findings.