Sacred Astra Begin Your Reading

A free tool

The sky on
17 August 2023.

Every planet at noon, Greenwich time, with the Moon’s phase and what was retrograde.

The MoonNew Moon1% lit, waxing

Moon inVirgo6° Virgo

Sun inLeo24° Leo

Venus, Saturn, Neptune and Pluto are retrograde.

16 August 2023 Today 18 August 2023

The zodiac with Aries at the left, every planet in its sign and the Moon at the centre, lit as it is that day.

Every planet

PlanetSignDegreeMotion
SunLeo24°Direct
MoonVirgo6°Direct
MercuryVirgo20°Direct
VenusLeo18°Retrograde
MarsVirgo23°Direct
JupiterTaurus15°Direct
SaturnPisces4°Retrograde
UranusTaurus23°Direct
NeptunePisces27°Retrograde
PlutoCapricorn28°Retrograde

The closest aspects

  • Mars trine Uranus0.6°
  • Sun square Uranus1.3°
  • Neptune sextile Pluto1.4°
  • Moon opposition Saturn1.7°
  • Mercury trine Uranus2.9°
  • Venus square Jupiter3.0°
  • Mercury conjunction Mars3.5°
  • Mars opposition Neptune3.5°

The number is the orb: how far the two planets are from the exact angle.

Reading the wheel

The outer ring is the zodiac, with Aries at the left and the signs running counterclockwise, the way a birth chart is drawn. Each planet sits at its place in its sign. The lines across the middle join planets in a major aspect: blue for the easy ones, trines and sextiles, and rose for the tense ones, squares and oppositions.

What retrograde means

A planet is retrograde when, seen from Earth, it seems to move backwards through the zodiac for a while. It is an effect of our own orbit overtaking it, or it overtaking us. Astrology reads those weeks as a time to review, repair and return, rather than to begin.

The Moon’s phase and sign

The Moon changes sign every two and a half days, and goes from new to full and back in about twenty nine and a half. At any one moment its sign and phase are the same wherever you are on Earth.