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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At — · —
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. Mercury and Venus loop for a slightly different reason — they overtake us on the inside track — which Mercury retrograde, explained twice shows with a live model; Today's Sky lists which planets are retrograde on any date.
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.