Your birth date, time and city show which sign was rising in the east at the minute you were born. It is the side of you people meet first.
City data: GeoNames
Your rising sign, or Ascendant, is the zodiac sign that was coming up over the eastern horizon at the minute you were born. Astrology reads it as the first impression you make: your manner, your pace, the face people meet before they know you. It also starts your houses, so every other placement in your chart is read through it.
You need three things: your birth date, your birth time and the city you were born in. The time matters most. The sky turns a full circle in a day, so a new sign rises roughly every two hours, and some signs much faster: in New York, Aries clears the horizon in about 70 minutes. Being born twenty minutes earlier can change your rising sign. Look for the time on your birth certificate; the long-form copy often has it. Then enter all three in the calculator below.
AscendantHow strangers read you in the first minute, before you have said much.
Look and mannerThe look and manner that come naturally: how you dress, move and walk into a room.
Anything newYour pace with anything new: a job, a city, a person, a day.
DescendantYour Descendant sits exactly opposite, so the rising sign also points to the partners you fall for.
Ruling planetThe planet that rules your rising sign rules your whole chart.
First houseThe rising sign opens the first house, and every area of life in your chart follows from it.
The calculator does what an astrologer does by hand, in three steps.
1. Your local birth time becomes world time. The calculator reads your city's time zone as it was on your birthday, summer time included, so 8:20 in April 1999 counts as 8:20 in April 1999, not as it would today.
2. World time becomes sidereal time: how far the Earth had turned against the stars at that moment, seen from your city's longitude.
3. Sidereal time and your city's latitude give the point of the zodiac on the eastern horizon. That point is your Ascendant, and the sign it falls in is your rising sign.
We checked the results against Swiss Ephemeris, the engine behind astro.com: the same sign in 2,000 random births out of 2,000.
A rising sign doesn't last exactly two hours. The zodiac sits at a slant to the horizon, so some signs climb over it fast and others slowly, and the speed depends on where you are. In the northern hemisphere Aries and Pisces rise quickest and Leo to Scorpio take longest: in New York a Leo rising lasts more than twice as long as an Aries rising. In the southern hemisphere it is the other way round.
That is also why some rising signs are simply more common where you live. The table shows one full day in four cities.
| Rising sign | New York | Los Angeles | London | Sydney |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aries | 1h 11m | 1h 20m | 0h 52m | 2h 22m |
| Taurus | 1h 26m | 1h 33m | 1h 09m | 2h 25m |
| Gemini | 1h 55m | 1h 59m | 1h 46m | 2h 19m |
| Cancer | 2h 22m | 2h 19m | 2h 30m | 1h 58m |
| Leo | 2h 34m | 2h 25m | 2h 50m | 1h 34m |
| Virgo | 2h 31m | 2h 23m | 2h 51m | 1h 20m |
| Libra | 2h 32m | 2h 22m | 2h 51m | 1h 20m |
| Scorpio | 2h 32m | 2h 26m | 2h 50m | 1h 34m |
| Sagittarius | 2h 23m | 2h 19m | 2h 30m | 1h 57m |
| Capricorn | 1h 54m | 1h 57m | 1h 46m | 2h 19m |
| Aquarius | 1h 26m | 1h 34m | 1h 09m | 2h 25m |
| Pisces | 1h 11m | 1h 20m | 0h 53m | 2h 24m |
Most astrologers start a chart with three placements, often called the big three.
Your Sun sign comes from your birthday. It is the sign people mean when they ask yours, and it describes the core of you: what you want and what you are building.
Your Moon sign comes from the date too, but the Moon changes sign every two and a half days, so on some birthdays the time decides it. It describes your feelings and what you need to feel safe.
Your rising sign comes from the time and the place. It changes about every two hours, which is why twins born an hour apart can have different ones. It describes how you meet the world.
The Sun and the rising sign match only for people born around sunrise, when the Sun itself is on the eastern horizon. Read together, the three explain why two people with the same Sun sign can seem nothing alike.
Without the time, no calculator can honestly give you a rising sign: in one day the Ascendant passes through all twelve signs.
Before you guess, look in three places. The long-form birth certificate often lists the time; in the US you can order one from the vital records office of the state you were born in. The hospital where you were born may keep the record. And a parent or relative may remember roughly, which already narrows it down.
Until then, your Sun and Moon signs still say a lot, and the Nua app reads your chart without a rising sign rather than guess one.
Enter your birth date, exact time and city in the calculator above. Your rising sign is the sign on the eastern horizon at that minute, and the result shows it to the degree.
Yes. The Ascendant is the exact degree rising on the eastern horizon when you were born, and your rising sign is the sign that degree falls in. Both names mean the same thing.
Usually the time. Near the edge of a sign a few minutes change it, and a site that applies today's summer-time rules to an old birthday can be an hour off. This calculator uses your city's time zone as it was on the day you were born.
Yes. The rising sign changes about every two hours, so people born on the same day in the same city can have any of the twelve.
Yes. There is nothing to sign up for, and your birth date and time are worked out in your browser and never sent anywhere.
Free to download. Your chart is calculated the moment you finish setting up.