Astrological situation on Monday January 19 2009

Check elnu.com for daily horoscopes, news and comment.

The Moon in Scorpio makes a favourable, sixty-degree aspect to Mars in Capricorn. It's a day when most of us will have a lot of energy and we'll be able to accomplish more that expected. And provided we're careful, physical activity can be the prelude to good fortune - move our body, change our luck!

At 10.40 pm London time the Sun moves into Aquarius - which is 5.40 pm New York time, 2.40 pm Seattle time, tomorrow morning in Asia and Australasia. It's a time of year when people are focused on technology, and how it might be useful in the real world. And if we've got a bright idea then we should be making plans to bring it out into the open.

If it's your birthday then over the next twelve months your social life will be buzzing with activity and from a career point of view your can benefit from your friends.

Edgar Allen Poe, a Capricorn, was born two hundred years ago, on January 19 1809. Poe was famous for his gothic horror stories, and he had an obsession with death and dying.

Capricorns often have a macabre streak, and they understand the inevitability of death. And with the Sun making a close conjunction to Mercury, the planet of communication, Poe would have had no difficulty expressing himself. In his horoscope Mercury ruled the Eighth House of death, further describing what he wrote about.

Edgar Allen Poe had a Scorpio ascendant - in other words, he had Scorpio rising. He saw the world as a heavy place, and he perhaps dwelt on the negatives.

No-one's too sure how Edgar Allen Poe died, which is not something we can say about Capricorn singer Janis Joplin, born on January 19 1943. Janis Joplin died of a heroin overdose.

The day before her death she visited a studio to listen to the instrumental track of the Nick Gravenites song Buried Alive in the Blues.

As devotees of Edgar Allen Poe will know, being buried alive is one of his most famous themes - for example, his stories The Cask of Amontillado and The Premature Burial.

Edgar Allen Poe died on October 7 1849, compared with Janis Joplin's October 4 1970.

Nick Gravenites was born on October 2 1938.