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Enter your birth date, time and place. The chart below is computed from the actual positions of the Sun, Moon and planets at that moment — the same verified ephemeris as this site’s planetarium — drawn as the traditional wheel, with whole-sign houses, the system the Hellenistic astrologers used.
Use the offset from UTC in effect at that place on the birth date (standard time, not daylight time, if you enter it manually).
A birth chart is a map of the sky at one moment, drawn from one place — so its three ingredients are a date, a time, and a location. From those, this page computes the ecliptic longitude of the Sun, Moon and eight planets (the ephemeris is the site's own, cross-checked against published oppositions and full moons to the day and the few minutes), converts each longitude into a zodiac sign and degree, and finds the ascendant: the point of the ecliptic rising over the eastern horizon at that instant, which fixes the wheel's orientation.
The houses here are whole-sign houses — the oldest system in the tradition, used by the Hellenistic astrologers and still standard in much of the world: the ascendant's sign is the first house entire, the next sign the second, and so on. (The popular Placidus system divides houses by a different rule and gives different cusps; whole-sign has the virtue of being exactly what the astronomy says.)
Read the chart the traditional way: the Sun sign is the self you are becoming, the Moon sign the self you fall back on, and the rising sign the face you meet the world with — astrologers call those three the Big Three, and they headline your result. This is traditional astrology computed with honest astronomy; what the tradition makes of the positions is presented as the tradition, not as fact.
The planets move slowly — hours rarely change their signs. The Moon moves about a degree every two hours, and the ascendant races through a sign in about two hours on average, so the rising sign is the one placement that really wants an accurate birth time. A time from a birth certificate is ideal; "around noon" still gives a sound chart for everything but the houses.
Usually one of three reasons: a different house system (irrelevant to the ascendant itself), a birthplace timezone handled differently (check the UTC offset, especially around daylight-saving changes), or sidereal vs tropical zodiac — this page, like Western astrology generally, uses the tropical zodiac.
A planet marked ℞ was in its retrograde loop at your birth — moving backward against the stars as seen from Earth, an effect of our own planet overtaking it (or being overtaken). Astrologers traditionally read a natal retrograde as that planet’s themes turned inward.
Moon Sign Calculator Rising Sign Calculator Mercury Retrograde