Your Sun, Moon and rising sign from your birth date, time and place, worked out from the real positions of the Sun and Moon. Then see the actual stars that were behind them.
If you were born at this moment. Enter your birth details above for yours.
Tradition A Libra Sun is traditionally charming and diplomatic, with a strong sense of fairness and beauty.
In the real sky: the Sun was in front of the stars of Virgo, not Libra. The signs have slipped about 24° from the constellations since they were set.
Tradition A Libra Moon is said to need harmony and partnership, and to dislike conflict.
In the real sky: the Moon was in front of the stars of Virgo, not Libra. The signs have slipped about 24° from the constellations since they were set.
Tradition Leo rising is said to make a confident, sunny first impression.
In the real sky: the stars of Leo were coming up over the eastern horizon.
| Planet | Sign (tropical) | Real constellation |
|---|---|---|
| Mercury | ♏︎ 12°58' Scorpio | Libra |
| Venus Rx | ♏︎ 7°14' Scorpio | Virgo |
| Mars | ♌︎ 7°35' Leo | Cancer |
| Jupiter | ♌︎ 21°21' Leo | Leo |
| Saturn Rx | ♈︎ 10°46' Aries | Cetus |
Rx marks a planet in apparent retrograde motion (moving backwards against the stars as the Earth overtakes it or it overtakes us).
The real stars over your birth place at your birth time, facing east where your rising sign was coming up. The constellation behind the Sun is highlighted. Drag to look around, scroll to zoom.
Ask an astrology fan for their signs and you will usually hear three: "Leo Sun, Pisces Moon, Virgo rising". Together they are called the big three, and each one is a real position in the sky at the moment you were born.
Over a year the Sun appears to travel once around the sky along a path called the ecliptic. Western astrology divides that path into twelve equal 30° signs, starting from the point where the Sun crosses the celestial equator in March. The Sun spends about a month in each, so your Sun sign depends mainly on your birthday. It is the sign newspaper horoscopes use. In 2026 the Sun enters Aries on March 20, 2026 and Capricorn on December 21, 2026 (UTC).
The Moon goes round the same zodiac in 27.3 days, about 13° a day, so it changes sign every 2.3 days on average (often quoted as two and a half). Two people born a week apart share a Sun sign but almost never a Moon sign. Tradition links the Moon sign to your emotional side: what comforts you and how you react. See the full detail, including the Vedic version, on the moon sign calculator.
As the Earth spins, the whole zodiac wheels past the eastern horizon once a day. The sign that was rising at the moment you were born is your rising sign, or ascendant. Because it turns with the day, it changes about every two hours, and it depends on the exact time and on where you were born. The rising sign calculator explains the geometry and why some signs rise faster than others.
Everything is computed in your browser with astronomy-engine, an open-source astronomy library used by planetarium software. For your birth moment it finds:
Here are four birth charts with well documented birth times from Astro-Databank, recomputed by this page's code when it was built. Each value matches the published chart to within an arcminute (1/60 of a degree).
| Birth data | Sun | Moon | Rising |
|---|---|---|---|
| Albert Einstein 14 Mar 1879, 11:30 local mean time, Ulm | 23°30' Pisces published 23°30' Pisces | 14°32' Sagittarius published 14°32' Sagittarius | 11°39' Cancer published 11°38' Cancer |
| Marilyn Monroe 1 Jun 1926, 9:30 AM PST, Los Angeles | 10°27' Gemini published 10°27' Gemini | 19°06' Aquarius published 19°06' Aquarius | 13°04' Leo published 13°04' Leo |
| Diana, Princess of Wales 1 Jul 1961, 7:45 PM BST, Sandringham | 9°40' Cancer published 9°40' Cancer | 25°02' Aquarius published 25°02' Aquarius | 18°25' Sagittarius published 18°24' Sagittarius |
| Barack Obama 4 Aug 1961, 7:24 PM HST, Honolulu | 12°33' Leo published 12°33' Leo | 3°21' Gemini published 3°21' Gemini | 18°03' Aquarius published 18°03' Aquarius |
Einstein's time is local mean time for Ulm, entered as 10:50 UTC. A fun detail from the real sky: his Moon, in the sign Sagittarius, was in front of the stars of Ophiuchus.
The signs were named after the constellations the Sun passed through about 2,000 years ago. Since then the Earth's axis has slowly swung round (precession, about 1° every 72 years), so the starting point of the zodiac has slid about 24° against the stars. Western astrology kept the signs tied to the seasons, not to the stars. That is why each card above has an "in the real sky" line: it names the constellation the Sun or Moon was actually in front of, using the official IAU boundaries.
Right now, for example, the Sun is at 17°59' Libra by sign, but in front of the stars of Virgo. The constellations are not equal slices either: this year the Sun spends only 6.5 days in Scorpius and 18 days in Ophiuchus, the "13th sign", from November 30, 2026 to December 18, 2026. Find yours on the Ophiuchus and real zodiac page.
The sky view above shows this directly. The dashed line is the ecliptic with the twelve sign symbols, the highlighted figure is the constellation that was behind the Sun, and the orange marker on the horizon is your ascendant. If you were born in daytime, the daylight is switched off so you can see the stars the Sun was hiding.
Tick "I don't know my birth time" and the calculator uses the whole day instead. Your Sun sign is almost always certain (it only changes on about 12 days a year). Your Moon sign is certain on a little over half of all days; on the rest the card shows both possible signs and the local time the Moon crossed from one to the next. The rising sign is replaced by the list of every rising sign through your birth day, with times, so if you know you were born "in the evening" or "just after lunch" you can often narrow it down. A birth certificate, hospital record or baby book is worth checking: in the US many states record the time, and in the UK it is on Scottish certificates and on English ones for twins.
"Cusp" birthdays are the days the Sun changes sign, and the dates move by a day or so between years because the calendar year is not exactly 365 days. If your birthday is on a change-over day, the calculator shows the exact local time of the change, and your birth time settles it. Astrologically there is no half-and-half sign: you are one or the other, perhaps at 29° or 0°.
Astrology is a tradition thousands of years old, from Babylonian omens through Greek horoscopic astrology to the modern sun-sign column. The meanings on the cards are that tradition, written briefly. Scientific tests have not found that birth charts predict personality or events: in a well known double-blind test published in Nature in 1985, astrologers did no better than chance at matching charts to personality profiles. Many people enjoy their big three as a language for talking about themselves, and the sky it describes is real: on the day you were born the Sun, the Moon and the rising stars really were where this page puts them.
Related: Rising sign calculator · Moon sign calculator · Ophiuchus, the 13th sign · Moon phase today · Planets tonight · Wheel of the Year
Your big three are your Sun sign, Moon sign and rising sign (ascendant). The Sun sign comes from your birth date, the Moon sign from the date and roughly the time, and the rising sign needs the exact time and place. Enter all three above to get them.
Enter your date of birth, birth time and birth city in the calculator above. It works out where the Sun and Moon were along the zodiac at that moment, and which degree of the zodiac was rising on the eastern horizon at your birth place.
You get your Sun sign and usually your Moon sign. The Moon changes sign every 2 to 2.5 days, so on many birthdays it changed sign during the day; the calculator then shows both signs and the time of the change. The rising sign needs a birth time, because a new sign rises about every two hours.
In astrological tradition the Sun sign describes your core identity, the Moon sign your emotional needs, and the rising sign the way you come across and approach new situations. Most astrologers treat all three as a set rather than ranking them.
The rising sign depends on the time of day, not the date. The whole zodiac turns past the eastern horizon once a day, so your rising sign only matches your Sun sign if you were born around sunrise.
In astrology the rising sign, or ascendant, is said to describe your outward style and first impression. Astronomically it is simply the degree of the ecliptic (the Sun's yearly path) that was on the eastern horizon at the moment and place of your birth.
No. Western astrology uses the tropical zodiac: twelve equal 30° signs counted from the March equinox. The constellations themselves have drifted by about 24° since the signs were set, so on most birthdays the Sun was in front of the previous constellation. Right now the Sun is in the sign Libra but in front of the stars of Virgo. See the 13 real zodiac constellations.
Positions come from astronomy-engine, an open-source library accurate to well under an arcminute for the Sun and Moon. The calculator reproduces published charts on Astro-Databank (Einstein, Monroe, Princess Diana, Obama) to within one arcminute. The biggest source of error is the birth time itself.
Yes, an hour error can move the rising sign by a whole sign. This calculator takes the time zone from your birth city and applies the daylight saving rules that were in force on your birth date, from the IANA time zone database built into your browser.
There is no blend of two signs: at any given moment the Sun is at one exact degree. The calculator gives the degree, so if you were born on a day the Sun changed sign, a birth time settles which side you are on.
Vedic (Indian) astrology uses the sidereal zodiac, tied to the stars, which today sits about 24° behind the tropical one. Most people's Vedic Moon and rising sign are one sign earlier than their Western ones. Compare both on the moon sign calculator.
No. Controlled tests, such as Shawn Carlson's double-blind study published in Nature in 1985, found that astrologers could not match charts to personality profiles better than chance. This page presents astrology as a cultural tradition; the sky positions behind it are real astronomy.