Chart gallery
10 moments in the sky, each one a clear example of something the encyclopedia explains: the equinox that falls in Pisces, the Sun in a constellation no zodiac has a sign for, the latitudes where house division breaks down. Every figure below comes from the same code that draws the chart, and the link opens it. Times are UTC.
The March equinox
20 March 2026, 14:47 UTC
The moment the tropical zodiac defines as its own zero point.
- Sun, tropical
- Aries 0° 00′ 04″
- Sun, sidereal (Fagan/Bradley)
- Pisces 4° 53′ 30″
- Sun, IAU constellation
- Pisces
The Sun is at 0° Aries and is standing in front of the constellation Pisces. Those two facts are not in tension: one is a coordinate measured from the equinox, the other is a direction toward a group of stars, and they have been drifting apart for about two thousand years.
Open this chartThree Reference FramesAriesSolstices and Equinoxes
The June solstice
21 June 2026, 08:26 UTC
The same disagreement, one sign further on, and wider.
- Sun, tropical
- Cancer 0° 00′ 02″
- Sun, sidereal (Fagan/Bradley)
- Gemini 4° 53′ 14″
- Sun, IAU constellation
- Taurus
The Sun enters tropical Cancer, the sign that gives the Tropic of Cancer its name. It is standing in front of Taurus, the constellation beyond the neighbouring one, because the constellations are unequal in width and the signs are not.
The J2000 epoch
1 January 2000, 12:00 UTC
The reference moment almost every modern star catalogue is measured from.
- Sun, tropical
- Capricorn 10° 22′ 07″
- Sun, sidereal (Fagan/Bradley)
- Sagittarius 15° 37′ 53″
- Sun, IAU constellation
- Sagittarius
A three-way disagreement, and the clearest one on this page. The tropical zodiac says Capricorn, the sidereal zodiac says Sagittarius, and the sky says Sagittarius. Two of the three agree here, which is the whole reason the sidereal frame exists, and they still do not agree exactly.
The Sun in the thirteenth constellation
10 December 2026, 12:00 UTC
A place in the sky that no zodiac has a sign for, and the Sun in the middle of it.
- Sun, tropical
- Sagittarius 18° 26′ 04″
- Sun, sidereal (Fagan/Bradley)
- Scorpio 23° 18′ 51″
- Sun, IAU constellation
- Ophiuchus
Both zodiacs cut the circle into twelve equal parts. The International Astronomical Union's constellation boundaries do not: they give the ecliptic thirteen constellations, and the Sun crosses the corner of Ophiuchus every year. At noon on nineteen days of 2026, from 30 November to 18 December, it is inside that constellation, and on this date it is more than eight degrees from the nearest boundary rather than grazing one. There is no thirteenth sign to add, because a sign is not a constellation and never was. What the tropical zodiac calls Sagittarius and the sidereal zodiac calls Scorpio is the same direction toward the same stars, which belong to neither.
The Ascendant and the Midheaven, far from square
15 September 2026, 21:40 UTC
Two points that a chart's own geometry draws as a cross, 126 degrees apart.
- Ascendant
- Gemini 23° 09′ 16″
- Midheaven
- Aquarius 17° 24′ 59″
- Midheaven to Ascendant
- 125° 44′ 17″
The Ascendant comes from the horizon and the Midheaven from the meridian: two different circles, crossing the ecliptic at two angles that have no reason to be ninety degrees apart. At London this is the worst they get. The separation runs from about 54 degrees to about 126 over a single day, and this is the moment it reaches the wide end. A chart drawn as two perpendicular axes is drawing something the sky did not do.
The great conjunction of 2020
21 December 2020, 18:26 UTC
Two planets at the same degree, the same minute and the same second of arc.
- Jupiter, tropical
- Aquarius 0° 29′ 12″
- Saturn, tropical
- Aquarius 0° 29′ 12″
- Jupiter to Saturn
- 0.07″ apart
- Jupiter, sidereal (Fagan/Bradley)
- Capricorn 5° 27′ 25″
- Jupiter, IAU constellation
- Capricornus
Jupiter and Saturn matched in longitude to a tenth of an arcsecond and came within about six arcminutes of each other, closer than they had been since 1623 and closer than the eye can separate. It was reported everywhere as the great conjunction in Aquarius, and the tropical zodiac does put it at the first degree of Aquarius. The stars behind it were Capricornus, and the sidereal zodiac says Capricorn as well. Every column of the chart is right. They are answering different questions, and this is the moment where the difference is hardest to wave away, because the two planets themselves are not ambiguous by so much as an arcsecond.
Mercury at its deepest retrograde
12 July 2026, 12:00 UTC
A planet apparently going backwards, at the moment it passes between the Earth and the Sun.
- Mercury, tropical
- Cancer 21° 03′ 49″
- Mercury, apparent motion
- retrograde, 0° 38′ 44″ a day backwards
- Sun, tropical
- Cancer 20° 10′ 05″
- Mercury to Sun
- 0° 53′ 44″ apart
- Mercury, IAU constellation
- Gemini
Retrograde motion is a fact about where the observer is standing. Mercury runs an orbit shorter than the Earth's, and when it overtakes on the inside, its apparent path against the stars reverses for a few weeks. The chart shows both halves of that at once: Mercury is moving backwards through the zodiac faster than on any other day of this passage, and it is less than a degree from the Sun, which is what an overtaking on the inside looks like from the Earth. Nothing has changed about the planet's own motion, which never reverses.
A new moon, as a coordinate
19 March 2026, 01:23 UTC
The Moon and the Sun at the same degree, which is all a new moon is.
- Sun, tropical
- Pisces 28° 27′ 05″
- Moon, tropical
- Pisces 28° 26′ 50″
- Sun to Moon
- 15.04″ apart
A new moon is a phase the Moon and the Sun make together. It is the moment the Moon and the Sun hold the same ecliptic longitude, which is why the Moon is invisible then: the lit side is turned away. The chart prints the two of them fifteen arcseconds apart, and the lunisolar calendars that begin a month here are keying a civil month to that coincidence and to nothing else.
Sect, one minute after it changed
15 September 2026, 05:41 UTC
The one yes-or-no question that reorganises half a chart, decided by seven arcminutes.
- Sect
- diurnal, borderline: Sun 0° 07′ 33″ above the horizon
- Sun, tropical
- Virgo 22° 24′ 59″
- Ascendant
- Virgo 22° 33′ 44″
Sect is settled by a single observation: was the Sun above the horizon or below it. At this instant it is above, by about an eighth of a degree, and one minute earlier it was below. Every other figure in the chart is all but unchanged across that minute. This site's tool marks the sect as borderline on the chart rather than picking a side quietly, because within three degrees of the horizon the sources themselves disagree. A chart drawn a minute either way shows the same sky under a different convention.
Midwinter at 78° north
21 December 2026, 12:00 UTC, Longyearbyen
A chart the most widely used house system cannot draw.
- House system requested
- placidus
- Cusps produced
- none, with a stated reason
- Sun, tropical
- Sagittarius 29° 37′ 31″
Placidus divides the time a degree spends above and below the horizon. Inside the Arctic Circle there are degrees that neither rise nor set, so both halves of that division are undefined and there is no cusp to compute. The tool reports which cusp failed, at what declination, and why, rather than falling back to another system and printing its cusps under the Placidus name.
What these are not
They are not readings. Nothing on this page says what any of these configurations means, because the site does not do that for a person and will not do it for a date either. Each chart shows where the bodies were and what the different conventions call those positions, which is a matter of arithmetic. It also shows where a convention breaks down, which is a matter of geometry. The reasoning behind that refusal is at scope, and how the positions are computed is atmethods.