Solar return

Your chart for the year ahead

The chart for the moment the Sun returns to its birth degree, read as the year ahead. It happens once a year within a day or so of your birthday, and almost never on it.

Required.

Optional, but without it the return has no houses.

Town or city, and the country.

The birthday the year starts from.

Optional. Leave blank to use your birthplace.

What this is, and what it is not

The return moment is a fact: it is the instant the Sun reaches a particular longitude, and it is computed from the same ephemeris a professional would use. What the chart means for your year is a reading, and this page does not make one for you. It gives you the moment, the signs and, where you have a birth time, the houses.

If you want to see what the sky is doing to your chart right now rather than what this year opens with, that is transits. For the slower picture of a whole phase of life, see the progressed chart.

Start from your birth chart

A return needs your birth details, so if you have not cast your chart yet that is the place to begin. Save it and it fills this form in for you next time.

Cast your birth chartRelocation chart

Questions about solar returns

The four that come up most.

  • The chart cast for the exact moment the Sun comes back to the degree it held when you were born. That happens once a year, close to your birthday, and the chart is read as a picture of the twelve months that follow.

  • Because a year is not a whole number of days. The Earth takes about 365.2422 days to go round, so the moment the Sun reaches your birth degree drifts, and lands a day either side of your birthday far more often than on it. The calculator prints the exact moment, which is why you can see the drift rather than having to trust it.

  • Both are used in practice, and they give different charts. The tradition treats the return cast where you actually are for that year as the more telling one, because the houses change with the location while the planets do not. Leave the second place blank for the conventional birthplace version, or fill it in to relocate the return.

  • For the houses, yes. Without a birth time the Sun’s exact degree is approximate, so the return moment can be out by a few hours, and the rising sign and houses cannot be computed at all. The planetary signs are still correct.