The sign and its names
Makara is a sea creature in Indian myth, often drawn with the head of an antelope and the tail of a fish, and the sign is drawn that way. English calls it Capricorn, Latin for goat horned. It is the tenth sign. In Devanagari the Sanskrit name is written मकर.
Element, quality and ruler
Capricorn is an earth sign and a movable sign. The four elements each hold three signs 120 degrees apart, and Capricorn shares earth with Taurus and Virgo. The earth signs are the second, sixth and tenth of the twelve. The three qualities repeat around the circle, and Capricorn shares movable with Aries, Cancer and Libra. The movable signs open each run of three: the first, fourth, seventh and tenth. These are traditional labels for sorting the signs.
The ruling planet of Capricorn is Saturn. Saturn also rules Aquarius. Saturn goes round the Sun in about 29.5 years, so it stays in a sign for around two and a half years.
The nakshatras in Capricorn
Capricorn covers sidereal longitude 270 to 300 degrees, which is exactly nine padas, or two and a quarter nakshatras. The nakshatras with a part inside it are: Uttara Ashadha (padas 2 to 4); Shravana (all four padas); Dhanishta (padas 1 to 2). Their ruling planets are Sun, Moon and Mars. The Sun is in sidereal Capricorn from mid January to mid February. The December solstice, about 22 December, comes earlier, while the Sun is still in Sagittarius. Its opposite sign is Cancer.
The Moon takes about two to two and a half days to cross a sign, so a moon sign of Capricorn 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 Capricorn and Sun sign Capricorn
Your Vedic moon sign, the rashi, is the sidereal sign the Moon was in at birth. Your Western sun sign is the tropical sign the Sun was in. They are different measures, and the sidereal zodiac sits about 24 degrees 13 minutes behind the tropical one in 2026.
For Capricorn the dates show it. In 2026 the Sun is in sidereal Capricorn from 14 January 2026 to 13 February 2026, and in the Western Capricorn from 22 December 2026 to 20 January 2026. Only about 6 days of those two ranges overlap, so most people with a Western sun sign of Capricorn have a Vedic sun sign in Sagittarius, 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 Capricorn and the navamsha
The nine padas inside Capricorn take nine navamsha signs in a row. They start at Capricorn and run on to Virgo, then the next sign, Aquarius, starts again at Libra. 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 Capricorn
Vedic readers often count planets by their distance in signs from the moon sign, called the position from the Moon. With a moon sign of Capricorn, the count runs: Aquarius is second, Pisces is third, Aries is fourth, Taurus is fifth, Gemini is sixth, Cancer is seventh, Leo is eighth, Virgo is ninth, Libra is tenth, Scorpio is eleventh, Sagittarius is twelfth. The sign opposite Capricorn is Cancer, and the two signs in a trine with it are Taurus and Virgo.
Sun in Capricorn: Makara Sankranti
The Sun enters Makara in mid January, the day known as Makar Sankranti. It starts the Tamil month Thai, where Pongal is held, and the Malayalam month Makaram.
Calculated with the Lahiri ayanamsa and whole sign houses; every setting is on the method page. Last checked 2026-10-04.