How far is far enough
A sign spans thirty degrees and the Sun covers roughly one a day, so distance from a boundary can be read straight off the degree in days. At noon in every year from 1930 to 2035 the Sun on this date has stood between about twenty four and twenty five and a half degrees of Scorpio. That leaves five days or so to the start of Sagittarius and a little over three and a half weeks back to the start of Scorpio.
Nothing in a birth hour touches that. The full span of a day moves the Sun by about one degree, so the earliest and latest possible births on this date differ by a small fraction of the gap. The sign is not in question at any point.
The other end of the same arithmetic is worth stating. Scorpio opened around 23 October, so a birth on this date came roughly three and a half weeks after the Sun entered the sign. Neither edge is anywhere close, which is why this page can state the sign without hedging it.
Why the word cusp keeps appearing anyway
Cusp language attaches itself to the second half of any sign because the popular date ranges are vague at the ends. When a table says Scorpio runs to 21 November and another says 22, readers reasonably conclude that the last stretch of the month is uncertain, and the uncertainty gets applied backwards over dates it does not touch.
The underlying idea is wrong in any case. At any instant the Sun sits at one longitude, and that longitude is inside one sign. Two hours before a boundary a placement is wholly in the earlier sign and two hours after it is wholly in the later one. What the word cusp actually describes is missing information, and the fix is a calculation rather than a blend.
On a date this far from an edge there is not even missing information to describe. The gap is large enough that no plausible error in the birth details could close it.
The distinction that does apply
Since the sign question is closed, the layer that separates one Scorpio birthday from another is the ten degree band. This position falls in the closing band, from twenty to thirty degrees, which the Chaldean order gives to Venus and the triplicity scheme gives to Cancer and therefore to the Moon.
Both are genuinely used, which is why decan rulers quoted in different places disagree. The reading passed down for the Chaldean version is Scorpio's persistence attached to a particular object rather than diffused, and for the lunar version something closer to the sign's guardedness turned inward. Both are conventions from the texts and neither is a measurement.
What the distance does not settle
Being safely inside a sign settles one placement precisely and nothing else. The Moon moves about half a sign in a day, so on this date two people born hours apart can have different Moon signs, and which sign depends on the year. The rising sign changes roughly every two hours and shifts with the latitude of the birthplace, so it needs a city as well as a clock.
The widget above takes a year, a time and a place. It returns the exact solar degree instead of the century-wide window, the Moon and rising signs, and the measured distance from the birth to the nearest sign boundary. On this date that last figure is comfortably large, which is worth seeing once in writing.
Questions people ask about this
Am I on the Scorpio Sagittarius cusp?
No, and not by a small margin. The Sun is around twenty five degrees into Scorpio on this date, roughly five days of solar travel from the boundary. There is also no such thing as a cusp placement.
Is 17 November ever Sagittarius?
No. Sagittarius begins when the Sun reaches two hundred and forty degrees of longitude, which happens on 21, 22 or 23 November depending on the year.
What is the solar degree on 17 November?
Between about twenty four and twenty five and a half degrees of Scorpio, taken at noon across the last century. The widget above computes a single figure from your own details.
Why do some sites say the sign ends on the twenty first?
Because the boundary genuinely moves by a couple of days between years, and printed tables have to pick one date. That vagueness at the edges is where cusp language comes from.
Which decan is this?
The closing band of Scorpio, twenty to thirty degrees. The Chaldean order assigns it to Venus and the triplicity scheme to the Moon, and both are in circulation.
Does a late degree mean the sign is fading?
Not in any technical sense. A Sun at twenty five degrees is as much in Scorpio as one at five. The degree matters for aspects and house placement rather than for membership.