The sky at this exact moment.
Geocentric ecliptic longitudes for the Sun, the Moon and the planets out to Pluto, recomputed every request by the same engine that casts your natal chart (VSOP87 for the Sun and planets, Meeus for the Moon and Pluto). Read it as a snapshot of the weather, not a forecast. Below the table, the Dial: drag the same wheel to any day from 1850 to 2100. The Dial also draws Chiron, which these tables leave out. Field note: the 27–28 August 2026 partial lunar eclipse.
Mercury, Venus, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are retrograde right now
Is Mercury retrograde right now? Yes. Mercury has been retrograde since October 24, 2026 at 07:13 UTC, when it turned at 20°59′ Scorpio, and it stations direct on November 13, 2026 at 15:56 UTC, at 5°02′ Scorpio. Every Mercury retrograde.
Common questions.
What is Charting Stars' sky now page?
https://chartingstars.com/sky-now is a live ephemeris: geocentric ecliptic longitudes for the Sun, Moon and planets out to Pluto, recomputed on every request by the same engine that casts natal charts. It shows each planet's tropical sign, degree, daily speed, and whether it is retrograde, plus the current moon phase. Chiron is drawn on the page's Dial, not in its tables. It is a snapshot of the sky, not a natal reading.
How are the planetary positions on sky now calculated?
Charting Stars uses astronomia: VSOP87 geocentric series for the Sun and planets, Meeus's lunar theory for the Moon and Meeus's Pluto series, in the tropical zodiac. Positions are computed for the request instant in Universal Time. Methodology is documented at https://chartingstars.com/blog/how-charting-stars-calculates-birth-charts; public fixtures are at https://chartingstars.com/research/birth-chart-accuracy.
What does retrograde mean on the sky now page?
Retrograde is apparent motion: from Earth's frame the planet appears to move backward against the zodiac. The Sun and Moon are never retrograde. Mercury retrogrades three to four times a year for about three weeks; the outer planets spend months retrograde. The Status column on https://chartingstars.com/sky-now lists each body as direct or retrograde.
How is the moon phase on sky now determined?
The moon phase is the angular separation between the Sun and Moon in geocentric longitude. New Moon is conjunction (near 0°), First and Last Quarter are the squares (near 90° and 270°), and Full Moon is opposition (near 180°). https://chartingstars.com/sky-now prints the phase label next to the live timestamp.
What is the difference between sky now, a daily horoscope, and a natal chart?
Sky now is the current sky. A natal chart at https://chartingstars.com/chart is the sky at your birth — the free preview is your Big 3 (Sun, Moon, Rising). Public daily horoscopes at https://chartingstars.com/horoscope read today's sky against a Sun sign. Transits are the live sky against a natal chart; the $4.99/mo Daily Horoscope at https://chartingstars.com/pricing#monthly emails those natal transits each morning.
Can I buy a natal reading from the sky now page?
No — https://chartingstars.com/sky-now is a live ephemeris, not a birth chart. The paid $19.99 one-time AI Natal Report at https://chartingstars.com/reading/new?product=reading is a written Hellenistic delineation of your natal chart from the same engine. The free Big 3 preview stays at https://chartingstars.com/chart.
Reading the year's sky events…
Method
The first clause is the sky event nearest the shown instant in its year: a planet entering a sign, a station (a planet turning retrograde or direct), or a new or full Moon. Eclipses are drawn on the strip below and can be stepped to, but they do not set this clause.
Motion: daily samples from the engine, interpolated within 0.0005° of it. Exact contacts across the site are measured with one orb table, by transiting body:
| Body | Orb |
|---|---|
| Sun | 2.0° |
| Moon | 2.0° |
| Mercury | 1.5° |
| Venus | 1.5° |
| Mars | 1.5° |
| Jupiter | 1.2° |
| Saturn | 1.0° |
| Uranus | 0.8° |
| Neptune | 0.8° |
| Pluto | 0.8° |
| North Node | 1.0° |
| Chiron | 1.5° |
1850–2100 · drag the track, tap an event, or use the arrow keys (N and P for the next and previous event)
Tap a planet or a sign on the wheel.
The whole instrumentWatch the Dial read a whole life: David Bowie, 1947–2016, with the transits to his chart as bars, the timing bands, and a reading that changes as you turn it. Open David Bowie’s timeline →
The table is the sky right now, live. The wheel above shows 2026-10-30 05:57 UTC.
| Body | Sign | Degree | Speed °/day | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ☉ Sun | ♏ Scorpio (water · fixed) | 06°53' | +0.999 | direct |
| ☽ Moon | ♋ Cancer (water · cardinal) | 03°12' | +14.522 | direct |
| ☿ Mercury | ♏ Scorpio (water · fixed) | 18°21' | -0.887 | retrograde |
| ♀ Venus | ♎ Libra (air · cardinal) | 27°07' | -0.540 | retrograde |
| ♂ Mars | ♌ Leo (fire · fixed) | 17°45' | +0.509 | direct |
| ♃ Jupiter | ♌ Leo (fire · fixed) | 24°06' | +0.125 | direct |
| ♄ Saturn | ♈ Aries (fire · cardinal) | 09°23' | -0.065 | retrograde |
| ♅ Uranus | ♊ Gemini (air · mutable) | 04°43' | -0.036 | retrograde |
| ♆ Neptune | ♈ Aries (fire · cardinal) | 02°06' | -0.022 | retrograde |
| ♇ Pluto | ♒ Aquarius (air · fixed) | 03°06' | +0.007 | direct |
Planetary aspects right now
| Aspect | Orb | Phase · exact (UTC) |
|---|---|---|
| ☿ Mercury □ ♂ Mars (square) | 00°35' | applying · in 10 hours |
| ♆ Neptune ⚹ ♇ Pluto (sextile) | 01°00' | separating · 44 days ago |
| ☽ Moon □ ♆ Neptune (square) | 01°05' | separating · 2 hours ago |
| ♅ Uranus △ ♇ Pluto (trine) | 01°36' | applying · in 30 days |
| ♅ Uranus ⚹ ♆ Neptune (sextile) | 02°36' | applying · in 3 months |
| ♀ Venus ⚹ ♃ Jupiter (sextile) | 03°00' | applying · in 5 days |
| ☉ Sun △ ☽ Moon (trine) | 03°40' | applying · in 7 hours |
| ☉ Sun □ ♇ Pluto (square) | 03°46' | separating · 4 days ago |
| ☿ Mercury □ ♃ Jupiter (square) | 05°45' | separating turned back before exact |
| ♀ Venus □ ♇ Pluto (square) | 05°59' | separating · 10 days ago |
| ☽ Moon △ ♀ Venus (trine) | 06°04' | separating · 10 hours ago |
| ☽ Moon □ ♄ Saturn (square) | 06°10' | applying · in 10 hours |
| ♂ Mars ☌ ♃ Jupiter (conjunction) | 06°20' | applying · in 17 days |
| ♄ Saturn ☌ ♆ Neptune (conjunction) | 07°16' | applying turns back before exact |
| ☉ Sun ☌ ♀ Venus (conjunction) | 09°45' | separating · 6 days ago |
Major aspects only, tightest first, within the engine’s orbs: conjunction 8° (10° with the Sun or Moon), sextile 4° (6° with the Sun or Moon), square 7° (9° with the Sun or Moon), trine 7° (9° with the Sun or Moon), opposition 8° (10° with the Sun or Moon). Switch on “Degrees & aspects” under the wheel to see them drawn as lines, with every planet’s degree; a conjunction draws no line, since the two glyphs already sit together.
Exact: when an applying aspect perfects, or when a separating one last did, without the pair leaving its orb in between; “turns back before exact” means a station turns the pair away first. Found on the committed ephemeris rows the Dial turns on: to the minute when the Moon is in the pair or the Sun and the fast planets close a degree or more a day, “about” the hour with a slow planet, “around” the day when the pair barely moves. Tap a time to open the Dial there. The next six weeks of exact aspects are the transit calendar.
The next eclipse is the annular solar eclipse of 6 Feb 2027, 15:59 UTC: open the Dial at its maximum and step on from there, eclipse by eclipse.
Algol, the Demon Star at 26° Taurus, next dims at 1 Nov 2026, 10:00 UTC. It is an eclipsing pair: every 2 days, 20 hours and 49 minutes its fainter companion passes in front of it, and for about ten hours it fades from magnitude 2.1 to 3.4, a change you can see without a telescope if Perseus is up and the sky is dark. Our timetable is fitted to 20 of its eclipses recorded by NASA’s TESS satellite in 2019, 2022 and 2024, good to about 20 minutes; timetables built on older orbital constants can be off by about an hour.
The Moon row above is one body among ten. Moon today isolates that same Meeus Moon: tropical sign, phase, illumination, and the next lunation. This snapshot is tropical weather, not a birth chart — recast a birth instant through Lahiri ayanamsa and Vimshottari dashas on the Vedic birth chart.
This snapshot is the live tropical sky for this UTC instant — ten bodies, including whether Mercury is retrograde right now. The 2026 Mercury retrograde calendar lists every station date and shadow window for the year, not this moment. The 2026 eclipse calendar is four dated solar and lunar maxima, not the sky at this instant.
A UTC snapshot is not a birth. How Charting Stars calculates birth charts is the natal pipeline that casts a birth instant, not this weather. Einstein's birth chart in Hellenistic, Vedic, and BaZi is Ulm in 1879, not the ten bodies at this instant.
A right-now planet table is not a published accuracy suite. The Birth Chart Accuracy Test Set is 7 natal fixtures with VSOP87 vs linked targets — not the ten bodies at this instant.
A live ephemeris is not a personality encyclopedia. The zodiac sign encyclopedia lists standing tropical traits — not this UTC sky table. The Moon sign catalog indexes twelve emotional interiors — not the Moon row on this ephemeris.
How do I read the live sky right now?
Each row is a planet's tropical sign, degree, and daily speed as of 2026-10-30 · 07:24:50 UTC, from the same VSOP87 engine that casts a natal chart. Retrograde is apparent backward motion from Earth; the Sun and Moon are never retrograde. The moon phase is the angular separation between the Sun and Moon.
How does the live sky relate to a natal chart?
The sky now is today's weather. A natal chart is the sky at your birth. Transits are the two together — which live planets are contacting your natal placements — and a free chart is how you read that overlay.
Cast your free chart, then the daily letter reads the live positions above against your natal placements — your transits, every morning.
Live planetary weather is not a Hellenistic natal delineation.
This table is the sky at this UTC instant. The $19.99 one-time AI Natal Report reads the sky at your birth — the same VSOP87 engine, written out house by house. Confirm birth details on the reading intake; 7-day satisfaction guarantee.