Your birthday chart
Once a year the Sun comes back to the exact point of the zodiac where it stood when you were born. The chart cast for that moment is your solar return, and astrologers use it as a map of the year that begins then and runs to your next birthday. The planets keep their usual meanings, but the rising sign, the houses and the planets on the angles are new each year, and those are what the reading hangs on.
The calculator finds the moment to within about a minute (checked against the Swiss Ephemeris), casts the chart for the place you choose, and shows the local time there. It gives you the wheel, a table of the planets in the solar return houses, and a reading of the parts astrologers look at first.
What to read first
- The rising sign sets the tone of the year: a Leo solar return Ascendant is read as a year to be seen, a Virgo one as a year to organize.
- The Sun's house is the year's main focus. The Sun in the 10th house points to career and visibility; in the 4th, home and family; in the 7th, partnerships.
- The Moon is read as the emotional weather of the year, by sign and house.
- Planets on the angles, within 8° of the Ascendant, Descendant, Midheaven or IC, are the loudest themes. Jupiter on the Midheaven is the classic hope for a career year; Saturn on the Ascendant a year of responsibility.
Why the moment moves each year
The calendar year is 365 days, but the Sun takes about 365.24 days to come back to the same degree. So your solar return arrives about six hours later each year, then jumps back by about a day after each leap day. It can land the day before your birthday, on it or the day after, and at any hour. For example, for someone born at 12:00 in New York on 1 July 1990, the 2020 return fell at about 22:12 UTC on 30 June and the 2026 return at about 08:57 UTC on 1 July.
That also means the birth time matters. The Sun moves about a degree a day, so an unknown birth time leaves your natal Sun uncertain by up to half a degree, and the solar return moment by up to half a day, which is enough to change the rising sign completely. Without a birth time the calculator shows the planets' signs only.
Where to spend your birthday
Because the solar return is cast for where you are at the exact moment, the same year can have very different charts in different cities. The Sun and planets stay in the same signs, but the Ascendant, the houses and which planets sit on the angles all change. That idea, sometimes called solar return relocation, is astrocartography applied to your birthday.
Choose a theme (love, career, home, growth, creativity or peace) and the calculator ranks cities of 100,000 people or more by how the solar return's lines treat them, using the same scoring as the where should I live map. Tap a city to cast your solar return there. Astrologers who use the technique treat it as one input among many; nobody needs to fly across the world for a birthday.
Solar returns and the other timing charts
The solar return sits alongside the other ways astrologers time a year. The transit chart follows the planets day by day against your birth chart and lists the exact transits of the year ahead. The Saturn return marks the roughly 29-year turning points, and the relocation chart shows how your birth chart itself changes when you move somewhere new.