The Observatory Desk · Live Sky
The living almanac.
This page reads the real sky the moment you open it. The Moon below is drawn to its true phase right now; its sign, the Sun's sign, and the next new and full moons are all computed from live astronomy — not written in advance. Come back and it will have moved.
Reading the sky…
The Sun, right now
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Plate · The Coming Lunations
The next new and full moons.
Plate · The Year in Falling Stars
Meteor showers.
The great annual showers, each the dust of a comet or asteroid the Earth passes through. Peak dates shift a day or so year to year.
Marked in : the next shower to peak from today. Rates are meteors per hour at the peak under dark skies.
Plate · The Backward Walk
What a retrograde really is.
No planet ever actually reverses. A few times a year, a planet appears to slow, stop, and drift backward against the stars for weeks — then loop forward again. It is an illusion of perspective: the Earth, on a faster inner track, overtakes a slower outer planet, and for a while that planet seems to fall behind, the way a slower car looks to slide backward as you pass it. The loop it traces is real to the eye but not to the orbit.
Astrology reads these windows — Mercury retrograde most famously — as times to review, revisit, and slow down rather than launch. Whatever you make of that, the motion above is exactly what the sky does. A live tracker of which planets are retrograde right now arrives with Astrarium's full ephemeris engine.
Moon phase, Moon sign, Sun sign, and the coming lunations are computed live from standard astronomical formulae, accurate to about a degree. Astrarium is a lens for reflection — never medical, financial, or legal advice.