Solar return chart and birthday map

What a solar return chart is

Once a year the Sun comes back to the exact zodiac degree it held when you were born. A solar return chart is the chart of that moment. It happens on or within about a day of your birthday, at a time that changes from year to year, because the calendar year and the Sun's yearly circuit do not line up exactly.

Astrologers read the solar return as a forecast chart for the twelve months from one birthday to the next. The planets' signs in it are simply where they stand that day; what changes from year to year, and from place to place, is the rising sign, the Midheaven and the houses the planets fall in.

How to read your solar return

1. The rising sign of the year. The solar return Ascendant is read as the tone and style of the year: how you meet it and how it meets you.
2. The house of the Sun. The return Sun always sits at your birth degree, but its house changes. That house is read as the main focus of the year: the 10th for career, the 4th for home, the 7th for partnership, and so on.
3. The Moon. Its sign and house are read as what the year feels like and where you look for comfort.
4. Planets on an angle. A planet close to the Ascendant, Descendant, Midheaven or IC of the return chart is read as one of the loudest voices of the year. The calculator lists every planet within 5 degrees of an angle.
5. Compare with your birth chart. A return is read against the natal chart, not instead of it. Your birth chart is one click away.

Where should you draw it: birth place or where you are?

The moment of the return is the same everywhere on Earth, but the houses and angles depend on where you are when it happens. Most modern astrologers draw the solar return for the place where you actually are at that moment, which is why some people travel for their birthday to put a chosen planet on an angle of their year. The Italian astrologer Ciro Discepolo has written for decades about this practice, which he calls aimed solar returns. Others keep the birth place, or the place where they live. The calculator lets you choose any of the three.

The birthday map

The birthday map is an astrocartography map of your solar return moment. Each planet gets four lines: where it is rising (AC), setting (DC), overhead (MC) and underfoot (IC) at the instant the Sun returns. Spend the birthday on a planet's line and that planet sits on an angle of your return chart.

The list under the map ranks large cities near the return lines of Jupiter and Venus, and near the Sun's MC and AC lines, the placements astrologers usually treat as the most welcome. Saturn, Mars and Pluto on an angle are read as a demanding year, so the list marks them when they run close to the place you picked. Tap any city or any point on the map and the chart is redrawn there.

Your birth chart's own lines are a different map: see your astrocartography map for where your planets point for life, and the relocation chart for a move.

How it is calculated

The calculator finds your Sun's exact birth longitude, then searches the days around your birthday for the moment the Sun returns to it, using the same planetary engine as the rest of the site (tested against NASA JPL Horizons, see method and accuracy). The return chart is drawn to the minute in Universal Time and shown in the local time of the place you choose when its time zone is known. Lines are drawn in the sky, with each planet's latitude, like the main map. Everything runs in your browser.