Practical astrology guide
Read a planetary position table without confusing degrees, retrograde markers, daily samples or exact event times.
Back to guidesAuthor / editor: AskNeyora · 2026-10-14 · Updated: 2026-10-14
Prepared with AI assistance by AskNeyora. This educational guide has not undergone independent expert review. Astronomical calculations and interpretive suggestions are different kinds of information.
Explore my birth chartAn ephemeris lists calculated positions of celestial bodies at specified times. AskNeyora uses geocentric positions in the tropical zodiac. Geocentric means the viewpoint is Earth; tropical zodiac means the signs are anchored to the seasonal equinox framework. These are calculation conventions, not promises that a position determines a personal event.
“12°34′ Taurus” means twelve degrees and thirty-four arcminutes into Taurus. Each zodiac sign spans thirty degrees; sixty arcminutes make one degree. The number is not a time of day or an angular distance from your house cusp. Read the body name, date, time standard and zodiac convention together before comparing it with another website.
Our daily table uses 00:00 UTC. A body can change signs later on that date, so a daily row and a later event can legitimately name different signs. For an exact natal position, use the actual birth instant rather than the nearest daily row. Fast motion matters most for the Moon, but the same principle applies to every body.
UTC is the common time basis. A 01:00 UTC event may fall on the previous calendar day in the Americas and later the same morning in East Asia. Convert the complete timestamp with an actual timezone, including daylight-saving rules. Do not simply add your current offset to a historical date. Our event tables explicitly label UTC so that a date difference can be checked rather than guessed.
R identifies apparent retrograde motion: the body’s zodiac longitude is decreasing from Earth’s viewpoint. It is not physically reversing its orbit around the Sun. Station moments mark the change between direct and retrograde motion. A body moving very slowly near a station deserves careful timestamp comparison if two sources disagree.
Use a monthly ephemeris for daily positions, an annual retrograde calendar for complete retrograde intervals, and an eclipse calendar for eclipse dates and types. In a sampled horoscope, the listed time may be the closest sampled position rather than an exact event. Before comparing numbers, check whether both sources describe the same event, time basis and precision.