AscendantChanges every two hours
Your rising sign is the zodiac sign that was climbing over the eastern horizon where and when you were born. Enter the birth date, the local time and the place.
Section I
The eastern horizon
The Ascendant is the degree of the ecliptic crossing the eastern horizon at the moment of birth. The whole zodiac passes over that horizon once a day, so each sign rises for about two hours, and a birth time off by a quarter of an hour can change the answer.
Rising signs are often read as the way someone meets a new situation: the first impression, as opposed to the Sun sign's sense of purpose or the Moon sign's emotional needs.
Section II
From the sky, not a lookup table
The calculator turns the local time and time zone into a precise moment, finds the sidereal time at the birthplace's longitude and solves for the point where the ecliptic meets the eastern horizon at the birthplace's latitude. It uses the same astronomy engine as the birth chart calculator.
Polar latitudes can leave the Ascendant undefined at some hours, and a clock that skipped or repeated an hour is flagged rather than guessed.
Section III
Twelve rising signs
Already know it? Open a sign for its traits, or compare two rising signs.
Unsure of the birth time? The Moon sign and Sun sign need no clock time in most cases.
