The sign and its names
Kumbha means a pot or pitcher, and the sign is drawn as a person carrying a water pot. Aquarius is Latin for water carrier. It is the eleventh sign. In Devanagari the Sanskrit name is written कुंभ.
Element, quality and ruler
In the traditional labels, Aquarius belongs to the air group (Aquarius, Gemini and Libra) and to the fixed group (Aquarius, Taurus, Leo and Scorpio). The fixed signs sit in the middle of each run of three: the second, fifth, eighth and eleventh. The air signs are the third, seventh and eleventh of the twelve. Elements are spaced 120 degrees apart, and the qualities repeat every three signs.
The ruling planet of Aquarius is Saturn. Saturn also rules Capricorn. Saturn also rules Aquarius. Its rings are made mostly of water ice, and they are very wide but only about ten metres thick in many places.
The nakshatras in Aquarius
Aquarius covers sidereal longitude 300 to 330 degrees, which is exactly nine padas, or two and a quarter nakshatras. The nakshatras with a part inside it are: Dhanishta (padas 3 to 4); Shatabhisha (all four padas); Purva Bhadrapada (padas 1 to 3). Their ruling planets are Mars, Rahu and Jupiter. Aquarius holds the faint stars of Shatabhisha. It follows Capricorn and comes just before Pisces. Its opposite sign is Leo.
The Moon takes about two to two and a half days to cross a sign, so a moon sign of Aquarius lasts that long each month. The nakshatra the Moon is in narrows it down further. Use the nakshatra finder to see both for your birth.
Moon sign Aquarius and Sun sign Aquarius
A moon sign counts the sidereal position of the Moon at birth, while a Western sun sign counts the tropical position of the Sun. The zodiacs are offset by the ayanamsa, about 24 degrees 13 minutes in 2026.
For Aquarius the dates show it. In 2026 the Sun is in sidereal Aquarius from 13 February 2026 to 15 March 2026, and in the Western Aquarius from 20 January 2026 to 18 February 2026. Only about 5 days of those two ranges overlap, so most people with a Western sun sign of Aquarius have a Vedic sun sign in Capricorn, and a moon sign in any of the twelve. The moon sign changes every couple of days, so the moon sign calculator asks for your birth time and place.
The padas of Aquarius and the navamsha
The nine padas inside Aquarius take nine navamsha signs in a row. They start at Libra and run on to Gemini, then the next sign, Pisces, starts again at Cancer. That is how a single degree of the moon sign points to a second sign in the D9 chart, which is read for finer detail.
Counting from Aquarius
When a planet is described as being some number of signs from the Moon, the count starts at the moon sign itself. For Aquarius that gives: Pisces is second, Aries is third, Taurus is fourth, Gemini is fifth, Cancer is sixth, Leo is seventh, Virgo is eighth, Libra is ninth, Scorpio is tenth, Sagittarius is eleventh, Capricorn is twelfth. Opposite Aquarius lies Leo, while Gemini and Libra make the trine.
Sun in Aquarius: Kumbha Sankranti
The Sun enters Kumbha in mid February. It starts the Tamil month Maasi and the Malayalam month Kumbham.
Calculated with the Lahiri ayanamsa and whole sign houses; every setting is on the method page. Last checked 2026-10-04.