Planetary Positions Today

A planet's position is its ecliptic longitude: how far along the Sun's yearly path it sits, measured from the point the Sun reaches at the March equinox. The tropical zodiac divides that circle into twelve 30° signs from the same point, so 0° Aries is the March equinox, 0° Cancer the June solstice, 0° Libra the September equinox and 0° Capricorn the December solstice. A longitude of 214° is 4° into Scorpio, which runs from 210° to 240°.

The positions are geocentric, seen from the center of the Earth, as Western astrology uses them. Standing on the surface instead shifts a planet by less than an arcminute but the Moon by up to about 1°, because the Moon is close enough for parallax to matter. A planet's sign is the same for everyone on Earth at the same moment; only the local clock time differs.

The ten bodies astrologers call planets move at very different rates: the Moon crosses a sign in about two days, Pluto in 12 to 31 years (the speed table below has the rest). That is why the 30-day table above is mostly the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars.

Each row of the positions table gives the planet's degree and minute within its sign (0°00′ to 29°59′), its daily motion and its direction. A degree holds 60 minutes of arc. The Sun at 17°14′ Scorpio has passed 17 full degrees of Scorpio and is in its 18th degree, the number degree-symbol systems such as the Sabian symbols use.

Daily motion is the change in longitude per day. A minus sign means retrograde. A value close to zero means the planet is near a station and will sit on almost the same degree for days; the stations table above gives the exact moment. The ranges below show what counts as fast or slow for each planet.

An aspect is an angle between two planets' longitudes that astrologers read as a relationship between them. Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos describes four (opposition, trine, square and sextile), and with the conjunction they make the traditional set. This page also counts the 150° quincunx as major, as many modern astrologers do, and shows three minor aspects behind the toggle on the aspect table.

Aspects count by degree, not by sign: 29° Aries and 2° Cancer are 63° apart, a sextile within orb, although the signs are three apart. The orb is the distance from exact. Each pair is allowed the base orb above, scaled by the two planets' multipliers: the Sun and Moon get wider orbs and the outer planets narrower ones, so a Sun–Moon square allows 8.8° and a Saturn–Pluto square about 5.4° (the methodology page lists every multiplier). The aspect table lists every pair within its allowed orb, tightest first, and highlights any under 1°. Applying means the orb is shrinking at the planets' current speeds and separating means it is growing; a planet that stations can turn a separating aspect back into an applying one.

A planet is retrograde when its longitude, seen from Earth, gets smaller from one day to the next. Nothing reverses in space. Mars through Pluto turn retrograde around opposition, when Earth, on its faster inside orbit, overtakes them. Mercury and Venus turn retrograde around inferior conjunction, when they pass between Earth and the Sun and overtake us. The Sun and Moon are never retrograde.

Eight planets can be retrograde, and right now five are; from 1950 through 2049, exactly five were retrograde on 4.6% of days. On half of all days two or three are, mostly the slow planets: the speed table above shows Jupiter through Pluto retrograde 30 to 44% of the time, against 7 to 19% for Mercury, Venus and Mars.

Astrologers read a retrograde period as a time to review rather than to start, most of all for Mercury, and they watch the stations closely: the planet holds nearly the same degree for days, so whatever it touches there gets a long, concentrated contact. The stations table above lists every station in the next 90 days, and the Retrograde Calendar gives the full periods, with shadow dates, for Mercury through Saturn.

Transits compare today's positions with a birth chart. A transiting planet within a degree or two of a natal planet or angle, by conjunction or by aspect, is the usual trigger, and its speed sets how long the contact lasts. Within 1° of a fixed point, the Moon stays about 3½ hours, the Sun about 2 days and Mars about 3 days when it is moving direct. Saturn can cross a degree inside its retrograde loop three times, for 70 to 120 days in all spread over about nine months. Pluto spends one to two years within 1° of such a point, spread over about three.

Without a birth chart, the positions still serve electional astrology, choosing when to act. Two common rules are to avoid signing contracts or launching while Mercury is retrograde and to avoid starting things while the Moon is void of course. The stations table covers the first; the Moon's sign changes mark the end of each void period.

To set today's sky against your own chart, generate a free birth chart and compare the degrees.

Positions come from the ephemeris run by this site's own API for the current minute in UTC: geocentric, tropical (measured from the true equinox of date), with the true lunar node and the mean Black Moon Lilith. The server rebuilds this page with a fresh snapshot about once an hour, and your browser fetches new positions as soon as the page opens and every five minutes after that. Aspects are worked out from those positions with the scaled orbs described above.

Sign changes, the Moon's included, and stations come from a table computed with the same ephemeris, so they agree with the positions to the minute. Station dates for Mercury through Saturn are the ones on the retrograde calendars. The About page covers the ephemeris, its date range and its accuracy.