The Ephemeris: A Table of Planet Positions

An ephemeris is a table that lists where each planet is on each day. It is the basic reference book astrologers have used for hundreds of years. Before computers, everyone had to look up these tables to build a chart. Today the app does that automatically, but the table is still useful when you simply want to know where a planet is on a particular date.

Reading the table

• Rows and columns: each row is one day of the month you have chosen, with positions for 00:00 UT (07:00 in Thailand), and each column is a planet or point you have chosen to show.
• Position: each cell gives the sign symbol and the degrees and minutes inside that sign, such as 12°34′. Behind this is the longitude, the planet’s place around the zodiac measured from 0° at the start of Aries to 360°, where every 30° is one sign.
• R: marks a day when the planet is retrograde, meaning it appears to move backward as seen from Earth.
• SR and SD: mark the day a planet seems to stand still and turn, either stationing retrograde (SR) or stationing direct (SD).
• Highlighted sign: the planet enters a new sign on that day.

The ephemeris in the app

The app shows one month at a time, a row for each day, for the years 1800 to 2200. Everything is calculated on your own device, so it works even with no internet connection. You can show the ten planets, every point, or the selection from your settings, switch between the tropical and sidereal zodiac, move month by month or jump to another year, and export the month as a CSV file for a spreadsheet.

What to do with it

Open the table to see on which day a planet changes sign or turns retrograde, then compare that with a period that interests you. You might check whether a planet was retrograde on your birth date, or find when a slow planet enters a new sign. It is a good way to learn the real rhythm of the sky.