The settled part first
At noon across the last century the Sun on 16 February has been between about twenty six and three quarters and twenty eight degrees of Aquarius. That is late in the sign and about two and a half days short of the change into Pisces, so no year moves it across.
The position also sits in the third decan, the ten degree band from twenty degrees onward, which the Chaldean sequence assigns to the Moon. Sign, degree and decan all follow from the date alone, and nothing else in a chart does.
Aquarius itself is fixed air, ruled by Saturn in the older scheme and by Uranus in the modern one. Tradition reads the last third of it as the more inward and retrospective stretch of the sign, which is an inherited interpretation rather than anything measurable.
What the Ascendant is
The rising sign is the degree of the zodiac coming up over the eastern horizon at the moment of birth. Because the Earth turns once a day, that degree travels through the entire zodiac in twenty four hours, which works out at roughly one sign every two hours.
It is the fastest moving point in a chart, and for that reason it is the one that most distinguishes two births close together in time. Two people born on this date six hours apart share a Sun to a fraction of a degree and rise in different signs.
The Midheaven moves with it, so the top of the chart also swings through the zodiac over the course of a day. Between them the two angles decide where every planet lands among the houses.
Why the birthplace matters as much as the clock
Signs do not rise at an even rate. The zodiac is tilted relative to the equator, so at higher latitudes some signs take four hours to come up and others take under an hour. The further from the equator the birth, the more uneven the effect becomes.
This means the same clock time gives a different Ascendant in Reykjavik and in Quito, and it is why a birth chart needs coordinates rather than just a country. A calculation without a place is not a calculation at all where the horizon is concerned.
Longitude matters for a second reason, since it fixes the local clock against universal time. An hour recorded on a birth certificate has to be converted before it can be used, and historical daylight saving rules make that step easy to get wrong.
If the birth time is missing
An unknown hour leaves the Ascendant unresolved and the houses with it. There are approaches that narrow the field by working backward from known events, but they produce a best estimate rather than a fact, and it is more honest to hold the question open than to accept a default.
The sun sign is unaffected either way. The widget above will still return your solar degree from your year and birthplace, defaulting to noon, and will report how far you were born from the nearest sign boundary. On this date that distance is comfortable enough that the noon default costs you nothing.
Questions people ask about this
What sign is 16 February?
Aquarius, about twenty seven degrees in. The Sun reaches Pisces roughly two and a half days later, which is a wide enough margin that no year changes the answer.
How often does the rising sign change?
Roughly every two hours, though the actual span varies by sign and by latitude. It moves through all twelve in a single day.
Can I find my rising sign without a birth time?
Not with certainty. It can sometimes be narrowed down, but any result from an unknown time should be treated as an estimate.
Why does the birthplace change the Ascendant?
Because the zodiac is tilted against the equator, so signs rise at very different speeds depending on latitude. Longitude also fixes the local time against the universal clock.
Is the rising sign more important than the Sun?
Different rather than more important, though it is far more individual. It sets the house framework, which is what places every other body in the chart.
Which decan is this date?
The third decan of Aquarius, from twenty to thirty degrees, assigned to the Moon in the Chaldean scheme.