How to read today's planets
Speed decides how much a placement says about one particular day. The Moon crosses a sign in about 2.3 days, so it is the planet that makes one day feel different from the next. It changed sign on 44% of all days since 1930. The Sun spends a month in each sign and sets the season of the zodiac, the one horoscopes are named after. Mercury, Venus and Mars stay a few weeks to a couple of months and color the stretch you are in now.
Jupiter and the planets beyond it stay for years. Saturn in one sign is a background for everyone born or working through that time, so astrologers talk about outer planets in terms of generations, not days. In the table, the top five rows describe now and the bottom five describe the era.
A ℞ next to a planet means it is retrograde: seen from Earth it appears to move backward through the zodiac for a while. The planet does not reverse in space. Earth overtakes it, or it overtakes Earth, and the line of sight swings back. Astrologers read a retrograde period as a time to review, not to start things. The best-known case is Mercury.
How long each planet stays in one sign
We counted every sign change from 1930 to 2025 with the same ephemeris that fills the table above. Mercury, Venus and Mars change sign more often than their average stay suggests, because a retrograde loop can carry them back into the sign they just left.
| Planet | Average time in one sign | More |
|---|---|---|
| ☽ Moon | about 2.3 days | Moon signs |
| ☉ Sun | 30.4 days | |
| ☿ Mercury | 30.5 days (sign changes every 24.6 days on average) | Mercury signs |
| ♀ Venus | 30.4 days (every 28.7 days) | Venus signs |
| ♂ Mars | 57 days (every 53 days) | Mars signs |
| ♃ Jupiter | about 1 year | Jupiter signs |
| ♄ Saturn | about 2.5 years | Saturn signs |
| ♅ Uranus | about 7 years | Uranus signs |
| ♆ Neptune | about 14 years | Neptune signs |
| ♇ Pluto | 12 to 33 years | Pluto signs |
Pluto has the most stretched orbit of the ten, so its stays vary the most: it spent more than 30 years each in Taurus and Gemini between 1851 and 1914 and about 12 in Scorpio in the 1980s and 1990s.
What is astrologically special about today?
Most days have nothing big. Astrologers single out a day when a planet changes sign, when a planet stations (turns retrograde or direct), or when there is a New Moon, Full Moon or eclipse. In our count of every day from 1930 to 2025 in New York time, 77.1% of days had none of these. A planet changed sign on 13% of days, a planet stationed on 4.9%, and a New or Full Moon fell on 6.8%.
The box above checks today on your device and lists anything that happens before midnight your time. A quiet day still has the Moon moving through its sign, and its sign change, when there is one, is listed with the minute it happens.
What each planet in its sign means
Every sign in the table above links to our full page for that placement, when we have one, so the meaning of today's Venus or Mars is one tap away. Each planet also has a page with all 12 signs, how often each one occurs and its next sign changes:
- Jupiter signs
- Black Moon Lilith signs
- Mars signs
- Mercury signs
- Moon signs
- Neptune signs
- North Node signs
- Pluto signs
- Saturn signs
- Uranus signs
- Venus signs
- Sun signs and dates
For your own placements on the day you were born, use the planet sign calculator or the full birth chart calculator.
Why another site shows different signs
If a site such as Drik Panchang puts most planets one sign earlier than we do, it is using the sidereal zodiac of Vedic astrology. That zodiac is pinned to the stars and now sits about 24° behind the tropical zodiac, which is pinned to the seasons and used by Western astrologers, by us and by most English-language horoscope sites. A planet in the first 24° of a tropical sign falls in the previous sign in the sidereal one. Each is correct within its own system.
Small differences of a few minutes of arc come from rounding or from whether a site shows the position at midnight, at noon or at the minute you open it. We show the minute on the clock above.
How we calculate the positions
Every position is computed in your browser from the astronomy-engine ephemeris: the planet's apparent position seen from the center of the Earth, along the ecliptic, in the tropical zodiac. Each sign is a 30° slice starting at 0° Aries. A planet counts as retrograde when its longitude is decreasing at that moment. Sign changes and stations are found to the minute by narrowing the time step until the change sits inside one minute.
We checked the event times against our own horoscope pages, which were compared with Cafe Astrology and Astro-Seek: all 101 planet sign changes of 2026 and 2027 and every station, New Moon, Full Moon and eclipse of 2026 agree to within two minutes. The page has no server and stores nothing; the date you pick stays on your device.
Questions about today's planets
What planets are the signs in today?
The table at the top of this page answers it for this minute, on your clock. Each row is one planet with the zodiac sign it is in now, its degree inside that sign and whether it is retrograde. Today's summary sentence above the table lists all ten in one line.
What is astrologically special about today?
Check the "Today" box above. It lists any planet that changes sign or turns retrograde or direct before midnight your time, and any New Moon, Full Moon or eclipse. If none of those happen, the day is quiet in astrological terms, as about three days in four are.
Is Mercury retrograde right now?
The Mercury box above answers it for today's date and gives the next turning point. Mercury goes retrograde three or four times a year for about three weeks each time. Every period for 2026 and 2027, with the shadow dates, is on our Mercury retrograde page.
What astrological signs are being affected right now?
In sun-sign astrology every sign is touched by the current sky, in a different area of life. The sign a planet is passing through counts as most directly affected, and so do the signs opposite and square to it. Our yearly horoscopes do this count sign by sign for the big events of the year.
Is today a good day astrologically?
Astrology does not grade days as good or bad, and we do not predict outcomes. Traditional advice is to avoid starting important projects while Mercury is retrograde and to start things near a New Moon. That is advice from the tradition, not a forecast.
Do today's planets affect my birth chart?
Astrologers call today's planets transits and read them against the positions in your birth chart, especially when a slow planet reaches the degree of your Sun, Moon or rising sign. To see your own positions, use our birth chart calculator and compare it with the table above.
Where are the planets in the sky tonight?
This page gives zodiac positions, which is where astrologers place the planets along the Sun's path. Whether a planet is above your horizon tonight and how bright it looks is an astronomy question; sites such as timeanddate.com answer it for your location.
Sources
- Astronomy Engine: the open-source ephemeris library behind our planet positions, dates and statistics
- How we create our readings: our own calculation of sign dates, positions and the 1930 to 2025 statistics
Related pages
retrograde planets now · Saturn return calculator · Mercury retrograde 2026–2027 · Venus retrograde · Mars retrograde 2027 · moon phase today · full moon calendar · eclipse dates and visibility · horoscopes 2027 · retrograde statistics 1930–2025 · birth chart calculator · today's planets against your birth chart (transit chart).
Astrology is a symbolic tradition, not a science, and nothing here predicts events. Positions come from the astronomy-engine ephemeris in the tropical zodiac; time zones from the IANA database. More in How we work.