Natal geometry, planetary returns, transits and house systems
The Western Astrology engine builds your full birth chart from the real positions of the planets, then keeps reading the sky as it moves. It places your Sun, Moon, and planets in signs and houses, maps the aspects between them, follows the transits and long return cycles shaping your current chapter, and can compare your chart with someone else's. What you get depends on how much birth data you provide, from a Sun sign sketch to a precise, house by house map.
Your natal chart is a snapshot of the sky at the moment you were born, and this engine builds it from your birth date, exact time, location, and timezone. From your date alone it places your Sun, Venus, and Mars in their signs, the core of who you are, how you love, and how you pursue what you want. Add your birth time and place and it calculates the parts of the chart that move quickly: your Rising sign (Ascendant), your Midheaven, and all twelve houses. Mercury is computed at noon when no time is given, so for births near a sign boundary it honestly flags that the true placement may sit in the neighbouring sign. The more complete your birth data, the more of the chart resolves into something specific to you rather than to everyone born on your day.
Once your birth time and location are in, the engine draws the full wheel and sorts every planet into a house, the life area it colors: work, home, partnership, money, purpose. You can switch between Equal House, Placidus, and Whole Sign systems and watch the placements shift, because astrologers genuinely disagree about which frame to use. It also reads the geometry between planets, the aspects, and names the larger shapes they form, like grand trines and T squares, with notes on the element and modality carrying them. Beyond the classical planets it surfaces the four major asteroids (Ceres, Pallas, Juno, Vesta) and the Sabian symbol sitting on each planet's exact degree, a small image that adds texture to a placement.
The reading is not frozen at your birth. A live sky panel shows where every planet sits right now, which ones are retrograde, the current Moon phase and sign, and whether the Moon is void of course, that quiet stretch when it has finished aspecting and fresh starts tend to fizzle. More personally, it measures today's planets against your natal chart and surfaces the active transits, the contacts switching on for you this week, each with a note on how tight it is and whether it is applying or separating. There is a lighter daily layer too, with the ruling planet of the weekday, the current zodiac season, and a short affirmation.
Western astrology tracks slow returns, and this engine follows the big ones. Your Saturn return, roughly every 29 years, is marked with its cycle number and how far along you are; the same for Jupiter's twelve year return and the Chiron return near age 50. It also runs annual profections, the Hellenistic technique that hands each year to a house and its ruling planet, with a modern or traditional (seven classical planets) ruler set you can toggle between. For longer arcs it computes solar arc directions, where every birth planet is nudged forward about a degree per year, and your progressed Sun and Moon, which show identity and emotional focus slowly changing over decades. Upcoming eclipses are listed, and the ones that actually contact your natal planets are pulled out into a personal eclipse map.
Enter a second person's birth details and the engine compares the two charts. It scores overall compatibility out of ten, breaks it into elemental harmony and aspect balance, names a relationship archetype, and separates what flows naturally (trines and sextiles) from where you grow through friction (squares and oppositions). Below the summary it lists the tightest cross chart aspects by orb, then goes deeper: Chiron contacts in both directions (whose wound the other activates), karmic lunar node ties, house overlays (whose planets land in whose life areas), Vertex contacts often described as fated, and a composite chart that treats the relationship itself as a third being with its own core and its own way of loving.
No, but it changes how much you get. Your Sun, Venus, and Mars signs come from your birth date alone, so you can start with just that. Your Rising sign, Midheaven, and all twelve house placements need your exact birth time, location, and timezone, because they change every couple of hours.
You can choose. It defaults to Equal House and lets you switch to Placidus or Whole Sign at any time, with the planet placements updating as you switch. Astrologers genuinely disagree about which system is best, so it leaves the choice with you.
Saturn takes roughly 29 years to circle back to where it sat at your birth, and that return tends to mark a threshold into a new life stage. The engine shows which Saturn cycle you are in, how far along you are, and how many years until the next one. It tracks Jupiter's twelve year return and the Chiron return near age 50 in the same way.
Yes. Enter a second person's birth date, with time and timezone optional, and the synastry reading compares both charts. It gives an overall score out of ten, an elemental and aspect breakdown, a relationship archetype, the strongest cross chart connections, and a composite chart that reads the bond as its own being.
Transits are the ongoing movements of the planets measured against your fixed birth chart, and they are what make astrology feel timely. The Today's Sky and Planetary Cycles sections read the live positions, so the active contacts, Moon phase, retrogrades, and void of course windows reflect the current sky rather than your birth moment.
Yes, it uses the tropical zodiac that Western astrology is built on, where the signs are tied to the seasons and the Sun's yearly path. If you want the sidereal, sign shifted approach instead, that is handled by the separate Vedic engine rather than this one.