Who is getting more than 360 degrees in a circle, greybeard? Who is confusing signs and constellations? I am not clear on the source of the confusion here.
To clarify:
The zodiac constellations have varying widths along the ecliptic. Some occupy more than 360 degrees. Some occupy less. There are a few spaces with no constellations touching them. Some constellations (like Aquarius and Capricorn) overlap spatially, but the sidereal sign system developed by the Babylonians gave preference to the sign closest to the ecliptic.
According to John Lash,
Quest for the Zodiac, the constellation Ophiuchus occupies 14 degrees along the ecliptic at degrees number 254 to 267 (counting from 0 Aries) or 14 to 27 Sagittarius (rounding error?)
The moon has her own pathway. It is slightly different from the sun's, and was the one the Babylonians used.
The 360-degree circle is actually an inheritance from the Babylonians. It is a cultural construct that has become an accepted convention. But obviously, you could divide up the degrees any old way you want. It is 360 degrees because the Babylonians used a sexagisimal (base-60) arithmetic system. Had they used base-10 like we do, they might have made it 100 degrees. Or some other number, who knows?
The beauty of the base-60 system is that it lends itself to more multiples and fractions than our base-10 system. 1/2 of 60 is our 30-degree sign. So is 1/12 of 360. We have 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds in a minute. Lines of latitude and longitude are based on this system, as well. But this is all custom and convention.
The signs are not inherently more logical than the constellations. Signs were a convenience to the Babylonians (who had been using constellations for centuries) because with their sexagisimal arithmetic system, they were a much more convenient way to predict eclipses.
Once you learn to visualize pictures in the sky, the arbitrary nature of constellations seems a lot less arbitrary. In ancient times before paper calanders were invented, stars, asterisms, and constellations served as ancient people's clocks and calendars. We can do this today. This time of year, Orion first appears in the evening further and further in the West. A sign that spring is coming. Farmers in Antiquity looked at risings and settings to calculate times to plant and harvest.
Sailors who navigated by the stars located the Big Dipper, and from it, the pole star. That's how they could tell which direction was north.
I invite anyone to go outside on the next clear night without a clock or ephemeris, and point out the signs, however.
greybeard, I don't get the significance of your official list of constellations from 1930, but I recommend the
Phaenomena of Aratus (ca. 310-240 BCE), the
Astronomica of Manilius (ca. 100 CE), or Ptolemy's
Almagest (ca. 150 CE) as star catalogues of the ancient Greeks. We know these constellations today. All of them list Ophiuchus. I also recommend Gavin White's book on Babylonian constellations, which were slightly different; or various Renaissaance planispheres which all show Ophiuchus.
The constellations have varied slightly since ancient Greeks described them, and telescopes subsequently allowed new ones to be identified. But the major ones have been our western cultural legacy for at least 2500 years. Ophiuchus did go by different names, notably Serpentarius.
Aratus gave a kind of backyard astronomy guide to the constellations, including Ophiuchus:
"mark near at hand the head of Ophiuchus, and then from it you can trace the starlit Ophiuchus himself: so brightly set beneath his head appear his gleaming shoulders. They would be clear to mark even at the midmonth moon, but his hands are not at all so bright; for faint runs the gleam of stars along on this side and on that. Yet they too can be seen, for they are not feeble. Both firmly clutch the Serpent, which encircles the waist of Ophiuchus, but he, stedfast with both his feet well set, tramples a huge monster, even the Scorpion, standing upright on his eye and breast. Now the Serpent is wreathed about his two hands – a little above his right hand, but in many folds high above his left."
Ptolemy (
Tetrabiblos I:9) described the influences of fixed stars according to the nature of planets. He wrote that the stars in Ophiuchus resembled resembled Saturn and to some degree Venus; with the stars in his serpent, Saturn and Mars. Since Saturn and Mars were considered malefic, perhaps Ophiuchus was not seen as an auspicious sign for candidacy in the zodiac.
For any astrologers inclined to work with fixed stars, there is no problem in adding those of Ophiuchus, or any other constellation. There are some decent guides on the Internet, like
http://www.constellationsofwords.com/ .