Instrument 08 — The transits hub
The sky,
right now.
Ten bodies, ten true positions — no recycled tables, no magazine approximations. This is the same ephemeris that drives the natal instrument, read against the zodiac the moment you arrived. Each position is a door: follow a planet into the sign it occupies and read what that combination does.
● Live positions — computed 18:01 UTC
Tap a position to read the full placement — 2026-10-01, geocentric tropical zodiac.
- Next new moon 2026-10-10
- Next full moon 2026-10-26
The machinery
A transit is a conversation between two skies.
Your natal chart is the sky photographed at your first breath; a transit is today's sky talking to it. When a moving planet crosses a degree that matters in your chart, its themes quicken: Mars crossing your Sun is a season of nerve, Saturn squaring your Moon a season of weight. Nothing mystical is required — only two positions and an angle. That is why this page computes rather than recites: the sky is different every hour, and any text written last month is already a historical document.
The tempo
Every planet keeps its own clock.
The Moon finishes a lap of the zodiac in twenty-seven days, the Sun in a year, Jupiter in twelve, Pluto in two hundred and forty-eight. That is why a Moon transit colours an afternoon while a Pluto transit colours a generation. Speed is meaning: the faster the body, the more personal and perishable the weather. The motion column above is the actual derivative — degrees per day, signed — so when a planet slows toward its station, you can watch the story pause before it turns.
● Keep reading the sky
Questions the sky
keeps getting.
What is a transit in astrology?
A transit is the position of a real planet in the sky right now, measured against the zodiac of your birth chart. If Venus is at 10° Pisces today and your natal Venus sits at 10° Pisces, that is a Venus return — a transit. The table above gives every current position; the interpretation lives in each planet-in-sign page.
How often do transits change?
The Moon moves about 13 degrees a day and changes sign every two to two and a half days; the Sun changes sign monthly; the outer planets take years per sign. The table refreshes itself every five minutes, so the numbers you see are the numbers the sky holds.
What does retrograde actually mean?
Retrograde is optical, not physical: when Earth overtakes a slower outer planet, that planet appears to drift backwards against the stars for a few weeks. Astrologically the planet's themes turn inward — reviewed rather than advanced. Mercury's retrograde windows have their own almanac page.
Why geocentric longitudes?
The zodiac used in western astrology is geocentric — measured from Earth's point of view against the ecliptic, the Sun's apparent annual path. Alfalaki computes every longitude from the VSOP87/ELP2000 planetary theory, the same mathematics serious astronomy software uses, accurate to arcminutes.
How do I know which transit matters for me?
Cast your free natal chart and compare degrees. A transit within one or two degrees of a natal planet is active; the closer the orb, the louder the theme. The placement page for that planet describes exactly what its energy does in a sign — transits borrow that same voice.
Now read it
against you.
A transit only means something next to a chart. Cast yours in two minutes — the ephemeris is already waiting.