Ascendant

Explainer · 08 of 8

Transits and orbs

Today's sky, measured against the sky you were born under. This is the daily horoscope.

Your natal chart never changes. The sky does. A transit is an aspect between where a planet is right now and where a planet was at your birth and that is the entire mechanism behind a personalised daily reading.

Every planet has its own cycle, so transits arrive on their own clocks. The Sun returns to its natal position once a year, on your birthday, and squares it every three months. Saturn takes about twenty-nine years, which is why people talk about a Saturn return at roughly that age.

TransitRecursReads as
Sun conjunct natal SunYearly (your birthday)Identity switched on
Sun square natal SunEvery 3 monthsEgo friction
Sun opposite natal SunEvery 6 monthsSeeing yourself from outside
Saturn opposite natal SaturnAges ~14, ~44, ~73Reckoning with limits
Saturn returnAges ~29, ~58, ~87Responsibility arrives

An orb is how close counts

Two planets are only exactly in aspect for an instant. An orb is the buffer either side of exactness within which the aspect is still counted. There is no universal figure: astrologers use anything from one degree to ten, depending on the aspect and the bodies involved.

This site uses tighter orbs for daily transits than for natal aspects, and tighter ones again for the Moon. A natal aspect is a lifelong feature and can afford to be loose; a Moon transit that counted at eight degrees would fire on something every few hours and mean nothing.