What a transit chart shows
Your birth chart is a snapshot of the sky at one moment. The planets kept moving, and a transit chart compares where they are now with where they were then. The inner ring of the wheel is your birth chart; the outer ring is the sky on the day you choose. Lines across the middle join transiting planets to the natal points they aspect.
Astrologers read a transit in three parts. The transiting planet says what kind of energy is arriving: Saturn brings tests and structure, Jupiter growth, Uranus change. The aspect says how it arrives, whether flowing (trines and sextiles), challenging (squares and oppositions) or merging (conjunctions). Your natal planet or angle says where it lands: your Sun is your sense of self, your Venus your relationships, your Midheaven your career.
Active now, and the year ahead
The page has two lists. Active transits are the ones within a degree or two of exact on the chosen day, tightest first, marked as applying (still building) or separating (fading). They include the fast planets, so they change from day to day; the Moon's transits last only hours.
The year ahead lists every exact aspect that Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Chiron make to your birth chart in the next 12 months, month by month. These slow transits are the ones astrologers treat as chapters rather than moods: Saturn crossing your Sun or Uranus squaring your Moon can shape a whole season. Each entry gives the exact dates, marks passes made while the planet was retrograde, and shows the span during which it stays within one degree of exact.
| Transiting planet | Within 1° of exact, each pass | Astrologers read it as |
|---|---|---|
| Jupiter | About 10 days, up to two months near a station | Growth, opportunity, confidence |
| Saturn | Three to six weeks | Tests, commitment, hard work, maturity |
| Uranus | One and a half to three months | Sudden change, freedom, the unexpected |
| Neptune | Two to six months | Dreams, confusion, inspiration, letting go |
| Pluto | Two to four months | Deep transformation, power, endings and rebirth |
| Chiron | One to two and a half months | Old wounds surfacing, and healing |
Those spans are measured with this site's own engine over 1950 to 2030. A slow planet that crosses a point three times can keep a transit active for a year or more.
Transits through your houses
With a birth time, the table of today's planets includes the house of your birth chart each one is passing through. Houses show where in life a transit plays out: transiting Jupiter in your 10th house is read as a time of growth in career, while transiting Saturn in your 4th points to work or responsibilities around home and family. Without a birth time the houses and the transits to your Ascendant and Midheaven are left out rather than guessed.
Returns are transits too
Some transits are famous enough to have their own names. When Saturn comes back to its birth position, around ages 29 and 58, it is your Saturn return. When the Sun returns to its birth degree each birthday, the chart for that moment is your solar return. The nodes return every 18.6 years (North Node calculator) and Chiron once in a lifetime, around age 50 (Chiron calculator).
How the positions are calculated
Transiting positions come from the same engine as your birth chart: Astronomy Engine for the Sun, Moon and planets, tested against NASA JPL Horizons, and a JPL table for Chiron. Every exact transit date is found by stepping through the year and narrowing each crossing to within an hour. The search is checked against the separate Saturn return calculation, and each hit is tested to be exact to within a hundredth of a degree. Details are on the accuracy and sources page.