The Zodiac Atlas
Natal chart · Planets · Houses

The Zodiac Atlas Birth Chart Calculator

By The Zodiac Atlas Editorial Team · Updated  · How we work

A birth chart, or natal chart, is a map of where the Sun, Moon and planets stood at the minute and place you were born. Enter your birth date, time and city below: you get every planet's sign and house, your rising sign and midheaven, a chart wheel, and a link from each line to a page that explains it.

  • Free, no sign-up
  • 12 points, ascendant and midheaven
  • Placidus, Whole Sign or Equal houses
  • Checked against 5 published charts

The example already loaded is a birth on July 15, 1990, at 7:30 a.m. in New York City. Change the date, time and place to get your own chart; the result updates as you type.

Your birth chart

House system

Born 07:30 on July 15, 1990, in New York City, New York, USA (clocks at UTC−4). Houses: Placidus.

PointSign and degreeHouse (Placidus)Read in the tradition as
Ascendant♌︎ Leo 13°59′1st cusprising sign: first impression, the start of the chart
Midheaven♉︎ Taurus 3°48′10th cuspcareer and public image
Sun♋︎ Cancer 22°44′12thcore identity
Moon♈︎ Aries 22°58′9themotional needs
Mercury♌︎ Leo 6°44′12thhow you think and talk
Venus♊︎ Gemini 24°23′11thlove and taste
Mars♉︎ Taurus 1°56′9thdrive and anger
Jupiter♋︎ Cancer 22°33′12thgrowth and luck
Saturn♑︎ Capricorn 21°58′ R6thduty and limits
Uranus♑︎ Capricorn 6°58′ R5thchange and rebellion
Neptune♑︎ Capricorn 12°55′ R5thdreams and ideals
Pluto♏︎ Scorpio 15°00′ R4thpower and renewal
North Node♒︎ Aquarius 8°06′6thlife direction
Black Moon Lilith♏︎ Scorpio 28°18′4thwhat you refuse to tame

Every sign links to our page on that placement (for a planet in a house, straight to the paragraph about your house); house numbers link to the house pages we have. R = retrograde.

♈︎♉︎♊︎♋︎♌︎♍︎♎︎♏︎♐︎♑︎♒︎♓︎123456789101112ASCMCMoon 22°58′ Aries☽Mars 1°56′ Taurus♂Venus 24°23′ Gemini♀Jupiter 22°33′ Cancer♃Sun 22°44′ Cancer☉Mercury 6°44′ Leo☿Pluto 15°00′ Scorpio♇Black Moon Lilith 28°18′ Scorpio⚸Uranus 6°58′ Capricorn♅Neptune 12°55′ Capricorn♆Saturn 21°58′ Capricorn♄North Node 8°06′ Aquarius☊

You have a stellium: 3 planets in Capricorn. That is common: 68% of the charts we counted have three or more of the ten planets in one sign, and 20% have four or more. Your planets sit in 7 of the 12 signs (average 6.5). All four elements are present among your planets.

Placidus and Whole Sign disagree on 4 of your 10 planets: Mercury (12th or 1st), Mars (9th or 10th), Uranus (5th or 6th), Neptune (5th or 6th). That is why different apps show different houses.

Next: how to read this chart in four steps. The full cusps, aspects and the calculation are folded below.

Your 12 house cusps
HouseCusp (Placidus)InsideArea of life
1st♌︎ 13°59′ Leoemptyself, body, first impression
2nd♍︎ 5°18′ Virgoemptymoney, possessions, what you value
3rd♎︎ 1°30′ Libraemptysiblings, neighbors, daily talk, short trips
4th♏︎ 3°48′ Scorpio♇ Pluto, ⚸ Black Moon Lilithhome, family, roots
5th♐︎ 9°58′ Sagittarius♅ Uranus, ♆ Neptuneromance, children, play
6th♑︎ 14°22′ Capricorn♄ Saturn, ☊ North Nodedaily work, health routines, pets
7th♒︎ 13°59′ Aquariusemptypartners, marriage, open rivals
8th♓︎ 5°18′ Piscesemptyshared money, debt, sex, loss
9th♈︎ 1°30′ Aries☽ Moon, ♂ Marstravel, higher study, beliefs
10th♉︎ 3°48′ Taurusemptycareer, reputation, public role
11th♊︎ 9°58′ Gemini♀ Venusfriends, groups, hopes
12th♋︎ 14°22′ Cancer☉ Sun, ☿ Mercury, ♃ Jupitersolitude, hidden matters, retreat
Major aspects

An aspect is an angle between two planets. Conjunction (0°): they act together. Sextile (60°) and trine (120°): they help each other. Square (90°) and opposition (180°): they pull against each other. The orb is how far the angle is from exact; smaller means stronger.

  • Sun conjunction Jupiter orb 0°11′
  • Sun square Moon orb 0°14′
  • Moon square Jupiter orb 0°25′
  • Jupiter opposition Saturn orb 0°35′
  • Sun opposition Saturn orb 0°46′
  • Moon square Saturn orb 1°00′
  • Moon sextile Venus orb 1°25′
  • Neptune sextile Pluto orb 2°05′
  • Mercury square Mars orb 4°48′
  • Mars trine Uranus orb 5°02′
  • Uranus conjunction Neptune orb 5°57′
  • Jupiter trine Pluto orb 7°33′
  • Sun trine Pluto orb 7°44′
  • Moon conjunction Mars orb 8°58′
  • Sun square Mars orb 9°12′
  • Sun opposition Neptune orb 9°48′
Your calculation, step by step
  1. Local time to Universal Time. 07:30 in New York City, New York, USA at UTC−4 (IANA zone America/New_York) = 11:30 UTC.
  2. Sidereal time + longitude = RAMC, the slice of sky on your meridian: 31.55°.
  3. Ascendant and midheaven from the RAMC, your latitude and the tilt of the Earth's axis (23.442°): ASC 13°59′ Leo, MC 3°48′ Taurus. In Placidus these are the cusps of the 1st and 10th houses, and the points opposite them start the 7th and 4th.
  4. Placidus cusps 11, 12, 2 and 3. Each degree of the zodiac takes a certain time to travel from the horizon to the meridian; Placidus splits that time into thirds. Solved for latitude 40.71° N: 11th 9°58′ Gemini, 12th 14°22′ Cancer, 2nd 5°18′ Virgo, 3rd 1°30′ Libra. Cusps 5, 6, 8 and 9 are the points opposite.
  5. Whole Sign gives the whole rising sign, Leo, to the 1st house and one sign to each house after it. Equal starts the 1st house at the ascendant degree and adds 30° per house.
  6. Planets to houses. The astronomy-engine ephemeris gives each planet's position, and the planet goes into the house between the two cusps around it.

Tropical zodiac, as in Western astrology. Planets from the astronomy-engine ephemeris; North Node and Black Moon Lilith are the mean points. Time zone and daylight saving from the IANA database for the city you pick; city list from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Can't find your town? Pick the nearest city in the same time zone.

What a birth chart shows

Astrologers read a birth chart in layers. The planets are the actors: the Moon for your needs, Venus for love, Saturn for duty. The signs say how each one acts, and the houses say where in your life it acts. The last layer, the aspects, shows which planets sit at meaningful angles and so work together or pull against each other.

Most of the chart depends only on the date. Everyone born on July 15, 1990, has the Sun in Cancer, Jupiter next to it and Saturn opposite. What the time and city add is the frame: the rising sign, the midheaven and the twelve houses. In the example the rising sign is Leo, so Leo is the 1st house; born at 9:30 that morning instead, the same baby would have Virgo rising and most planets would sit in a different house.

What you need: date, time and place

The date gives you the planets in their signs. The time and the city give you the ascendant and the houses, and they need to be accurate: the sky turns about one degree every four minutes, so a time rounded to the half hour can move your rising sign or put a planet in the next house.

In the United States, the long-form birth certificate usually has a field for the time of birth, and the state vital records office can issue that copy. A hospital bracelet or a baby book is the next best source. A time remembered as "around lunch" is a guess, and the calculator cannot tell the difference.

How to read your birth chart in four steps

  1. Your big three. The Sun, Moon and rising sign carry most of the weight in a reading. Our page on the Sun, Moon and rising sign explains how the three combine and how rare your combination is.
  2. Each planet in its sign. Read one planet at a time. The sign in the calculator links to our page on it, for example Moon in Aries for the example chart. Your Sun sign links to the Cancer page. The Sun sign alone, from a birthday: zodiac sign by birthday.
  3. The houses. A planet's house says where it works. In the example, Jupiter at Cancer 22°33′ is in the 12th house, the house of solitude and things done out of sight. Our houses page explains all twelve and the systems behind them.
  4. The aspects. Two planets at 0°, 60°, 90°, 120° or 180° from each other are said to be in aspect. Astrologers read 0° as the two working together, 60° and 120° as easy help, 90° and 180° as tension. In the example the Sun and Jupiter are 0°11′ from an exact conjunction, and the Sun and Moon are 0°14′ from an exact square. Read the aspects with the smallest orb first.

The rising sign and the midheaven are the two angles of the chart. Our rising sign calculator shows every sign that rose on your birthday, and the midheaven pages explain the sign at the top of the chart (in the example, Taurus).

Two charts or two moments: the synastry chart calculator lays your chart over a partner's, and the transit chart calculator lays today's planets over yours. Once a year there is a third: the solar return chart, cast for the moment the Sun gets back to its birth degree. Astrologers who read fated meetings in a chart also look at one calculated point, the vertex, and those who read marriage add the asteroid Juno.

To see a finished chart read step by step, open one of our celebrity birth charts, drawn only from birth times on record, such as Beyoncé's birth chart.

Famous charts with a birth time on record

The 12 points in the calculator

PointWhat astrologers read in it
☉ Sunwho you are when you act on purpose; the sign everyone knows
☽ Moonwhat you need to feel safe, and how you react before you think
☿ Mercuryhow you think, talk and learn
♀ Venuswhat you love, how you show affection, your taste
♂ Marsdrive, desire and the way you fight
♃ Jupiterwhere you grow and where luck is said to come easily
♄ Saturnduty, limits and the lessons that take years
♅ Uranuswhere you break from habit (one sign for about seven years)
♆ Neptunedreams and ideals (one sign for about fourteen years)
♇ Plutopower and deep change (one sign for twelve to thirty years)
☊ North Nodethe direction astrologers say you are meant to grow in
⚸ Black Moon Liliththe part of you that refuses to be tamed

The North Node and Black Moon Lilith are points, not bodies. The node is where the Moon's path crosses the Sun's path; Lilith is the far end of the Moon's orbit. Both have a "mean" version, which moves smoothly, and a "true" version, which wobbles around it. We use the mean points, as most chart sites do by default, so if another site shows a Node or Lilith a little away from ours, check which version it uses. Our North Node calculator shows both versions of the node side by side.

Houses and house systems

The twelve houses divide the sky around your birthplace, starting from the ascendant. Astrologers have several ways to cut them, and the calculator lets you switch between the three most used: Placidus (the default in most Western software), Whole Sign (the oldest, one sign per house) and Equal (30° from the ascendant). The switch changes the houses only, never the signs.

The system can change a planet's house. In the example, Mercury at Leo 6°44′ is in the 12th house in Placidus but in the 1st in Whole Sign. Our houses page has the count for five US cities: Placidus and Whole Sign disagree on at least one planet in almost every chart.

A birth chart without a birth time

Without a time we can still give you the sign of every planet, but not a rising sign, a midheaven or houses, because they change through the day: the rising sign moves on about every two hours, and every house cusp moves with it. Some sites cast the chart for noon instead. That gets the planets right but draws houses that belong to someone born at noon.

The Moon is the one planet that often changes sign within a day. We checked every date from 1930 to 2025 in New York time: the Moon moved into a new sign during the local day on 44% of dates. Add the other planets and the two points, and 51% of dates had at least one sign change. On those dates the calculator gives both signs and says the hour decides. If the Moon is the only thing you want, the Moon sign calculator gives its degree, the exact hour of the change and your Moon phase at birth.

Our numbers: what an ordinary chart looks like

We drew a chart for every date from 1930 to 2025 in New York, 35,064 charts at one moment each spread evenly over the day, and counted the ten planets from the Sun to Pluto. The calculator compares your chart with these numbers.

In the chartShare of charts
Three or more planets in one sign (stellium)68.3%
Four or more planets in one sign19.8%
At least one element with no planet22.6%
Planets spread over 6 or 7 signs65.0%
Sun, Moon and rising in one sign (five US cities)0.68%

So a stellium, which many sites present as a sign of a special chart, is the usual case: about two charts in three have one (our stellium calculator checks yours and applies the stricter rules). The rare chart is the one with ten planets spread so evenly that no sign holds three. Missing an element is less common but still happens in about one chart in five, and the most often missing element was air (7.6%).

Shares of clock time, not of people: births are not spread perfectly evenly over the day. Only the ten planets are counted; the Node and Lilith are left out.

How accurate the calculator is

We tested it on five charts from the Astro-Databank collection: Barack Obama, Steve Jobs, Marilyn Monroe and Albert Einstein, whose birth times come from a birth certificate or birth record (Rodden rating AA), and Madonna, whose time is disputed (rated DD) but is printed the same way on both sites we compared with. We compared all twelve points, the ascendant, the midheaven and the Placidus cusps with the charts published by astro-seek.com and astrotheme.com, 220 comparisons in all. Planets, the North Node, the angles and the cusps matched within 0.02°, which is about the rounding of the published minutes. Black Moon Lilith matched astro-seek.com within 0.02° as well, after we projected the mean apogee from the Moon's tilted orbit onto the ecliptic, the way Swiss Ephemeris does; without that step it differed by up to 0.13°.

Questions about birth charts

Is a birth chart the same as a natal chart?

Yes. Birth chart, natal chart and natal horoscope all mean the same map: where the Sun, Moon and planets were, seen from your birthplace, at the minute you were born. "Horoscope" first meant this map too; the Greek word horoskopos, "hour marker", was the name for the rising degree. The daily horoscope in a magazine is a later use of the word.

How do I read my birth chart?

Start with your big three: the Sun, Moon and rising sign. Then read each planet in its sign, then the house it sits in, which says where in life it works. Aspects come last: they show which planets talk to each other. Every row of the calculator above links to our page on that placement, so you can read it in that order.

Can ChatGPT analyze my birth chart?

A chatbot can talk about placements you give it, but it should not be trusted to work them out. Planet positions and house cusps need an ephemeris and the right time zone for your birth date, and a language model that guesses them can put a planet in the wrong sign. Calculate the chart first, here or on any chart site, then ask questions about the placements it gives you.

Where can I get a free birth chart analysis?

The calculator above is free and has no sign-up. It lists every placement with its house and links each one to a page that explains it in the tradition. It does not write a single paragraph about your whole chart, because combining twelve points well needs judgment, and a template that pretends otherwise reads the same for everyone.

What is my first house in astrology?

Your 1st house begins at your ascendant, the degree of the zodiac that was rising in the east when you were born, so its sign is your rising sign. In the July 1990 example it starts at Leo 13°59′. In Whole Sign houses the whole rising sign is the 1st house.

Can I get a birth chart without a birth time?

Partly. The signs of the Sun and the slow planets do not depend on the hour, and on most dates the Moon does not either. But the ascendant, the midheaven and all 12 houses do, and they cannot be filled in honestly without a time. In our New York count the Moon changed sign during the local day on 44% of dates, and some planet or point changed sign on 51%. On those days the calculator shows both signs.

Why does another site give me a different chart?

There are three usual reasons. A different house system: many sites use Placidus, some Whole Sign, and in our New York count the two disagree on at least one planet in nearly every chart. A different time zone: an old date read with today's daylight saving rules is off by an hour. And a different Node or Lilith: some sites use the "true" points, which wobble around the mean ones we use.

What is a stellium?

A group of three or more planets in one sign or one house (some astrologers ask for four). It is not rare: in our count 68% of charts have three or more of the ten planets in one sign, and 20% have four or more.

Sources

Astrology is a symbolic tradition, not a science; nothing here predicts events. We explain what the tradition says and show the calculation so you can check it. Positions come from the astronomy-engine ephemeris in the tropical zodiac; the North Node and Lilith are the mean points (Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms); time zones from the IANA database; the city list from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). More in How we work.