How to Check Whether a Planet in Your Chart Is Unaspected

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The free birth chart does not tell you which planets are unaspected, and the wheel alone is not a reliable way to see it. This page shows how to check by hand from the planet table, using the definition set out on unaspected planets: meaning and definition. It ends with the extra steps needed when Pluto or Chiron is missing from the chart or the birth time is unknown.

Calculator note: Astrologist.com does not display an aspect list or label planets as unaspected. The free birth chart draws the five major aspect types between available planets, Lunar Nodes and Chiron, using 8° orbs except 6° for sextiles. The automatic North-South Node opposition is excluded, and no aspect lines are drawn to the chart angles. Conjunction lines can be very short, and Moon lines are omitted when the birth time is unknown. A missing line therefore does not prove that a planet is unaspected. Check the positions and data coverage; near an orb boundary, the displayed whole minutes may be insufficient. Without a birth time, noon positions alone cannot establish unaspected status.

The check on this page applies the convention of these guides. In these guides, a planet is called unaspected when it has no conjunction, sextile, square, trine or opposition to any of the other planets from the Sun through Pluto, either Mean Lunar Node, or Chiron, using Astrologist.com's fixed orbs of 8°, 6°, 8°, 8° and 8° respectively.

Why the wheel is not enough

Each aspect line on the wheel runs between the two bodies' exact longitudes on the inner circle, but the glyphs are spread out so that they never sit closer than 12° on the drawing. In a crowded part of the chart a glyph can therefore sit a little to the side of where its lines end. Conjunction lines are also very short: in the 500-unit drawing, a line between two bodies 8° apart is about 18 units long, and at 1° apart it is about 2 units, easy to miss at 30% opacity. A planet whose only contact is a tight conjunction can look as if it has no lines at all. The numbers in the planet table do not have these problems.

Step 1: write down every position

Generate the chart on the free birth chart. The planet table under the wheel lists each body as degree, minute and sign glyph. You need all of them: the ten planets, the North Node, the South Node and Chiron. Check the notes under the chart as well. Pluto is calculated for birth dates from 1885 to 2099 and Chiron from 1920 to 2060; outside those dates the chart says the body is not included.

Turn each position into a longitude counted from 0° Aries by adding the start of its sign and dividing the minutes by 60:

Step 2: measure the separation

For the planet you are testing and one partner, subtract the smaller longitude from the larger. If the result is more than 180°, subtract it from 360°. The answer, between 0° and 180°, is the separation: the shorter way round the circle. Signs play no part in this, so two bodies at 29° Scorpio and 0° Virgo are 89.2° apart and in square, while two bodies in the same sign 9° apart are not conjunct.

Step 3: compare it with the five windows

The edges count: a separation of exactly 66° is still a sextile. Anything outside these five ranges is no major aspect for that pair.

Step 4: repeat for every partner

Do this for all twelve partners: the other nine planets, both Nodes and Chiron. Check the two Nodes separately. They are exactly opposite each other, so a square to one is a square to the other and a conjunction to one is an opposition to the other, but the sextile window is narrower than the trine window. A planet 113° from the South Node is in trine with it, while it is 67° from the North Node, just outside the sextile. Only when all twelve separations fall outside all five windows is the planet unaspected under this test. Finding one aspect is enough to stop.

A worked example

Sanne is a fictional person. Her chart was calculated with the free chart's routines for The Hague, 11 March 1983, 07:40. Her Venus is at 20°06' Aries, which is 20.10°. These are the twelve checks, worked from the positions as the table shows them:

Every check fails, so Sanne's Venus is unaspected under the definition these guides use, and no line ends at Venus on her wheel. Notice how close some of the calls are. Mars is in the same sign and only 9.17° away, yet not conjunct. Neptune and Pluto miss a trine and an opposition by about a degree each. Her Ascendant is 6°31' Aries, but angles are not part of this test. What a near miss can mean, and how other conventions would classify this Venus, is covered on unaspected or not: borderline cases.

When a separation lands near an edge

The calculator rounds each longitude to a hundredth of a degree, and the table then shows whole minutes, dropping the rest. A separation worked out from the table can therefore differ from the one the calculator compares by up to about 0.8 minutes of arc. If your result is within about a minute of arc of an orb edge, the table cannot tell you which side it falls on, and you need positions to a finer precision. This is about the display only; it is not a statement about the accuracy of the underlying astronomy. In Sanne's chart the closest call is a full degree from an edge, so the table is more than precise enough.

When Pluto or Chiron is missing

If the chart says Pluto or Chiron is not included, you cannot complete the twelve checks from the table. Any aspect you do find still settles the question: the planet is not unaspected. But if every available check fails, do not conclude that the planet is unaspected. A missing body is missing evidence, not proof that no aspect exists. Look up the missing position for the birth date and time in an ephemeris and complete the check, or leave the result open.

Without a birth time

With no birth time, the chart positions every body at local noon as a date reference, marks the Moon with ≈ and leaves out the Moon's aspect lines. That affects every planet, not only the Moon, because a planet could make an aspect to the Moon at some possible birth times even though no line is drawn. The rule is conservative:

• One major aspect that holds at every possible birth time on that date is enough to rule out unaspected.
• To establish that a planet is unaspected, every partner, the Moon included, has to stay outside all five windows for the whole date.
• Otherwise the status is uncertain. The noon reference alone does not establish it.

Three calculated London dates show the difference. The people are fictional, and each date was checked at all 1,440 whole-minute birth times the calculator accepts, from 00:00 to 23:59.

Lucas, London, 1 January 1991, time unknown. The noon reference shows Mercury at 24°06' Sagittarius. Across the whole day Mercury stayed outside every window to every partner. The closest it came to an edge was 4.06°, beyond the trine window with Jupiter, while no separation moved by more than 0.03° from one minute to the next. The Moon moved from 13°13' to 28°11' Cancer and never came within 10.92° of a window edge with Mercury. Lucas's Mercury is unaspected whatever his birth time.

Mia, London, 4 January 1991, time unknown. The noon reference shows Mercury at 23°45' Sagittarius with no line, and the noon Moon at 4°04' Virgo is 109.68° from Mercury, 2.32° short of the trine window. Even the noon Moon makes no aspect to Mercury. But the Moon moved from 27°06' Leo at 00:00 to 10°54' Virgo at 23:59, and from 00:00 to 07:56 it was within the trine window. Mia's Mercury is trine her Moon if she was born at 07:56 or earlier and unaspected if she was born from 07:57 on. Without her time, its status is uncertain. Her Moon sign is uncertain too: Leo or Virgo.

The whole-day test can also settle the Moon itself. On 29 April 1987 in London, the Moon stayed outside every window to every partner at all 1,440 minutes, never closer than 1.02° to an edge, even though its sign changed from Taurus to Gemini during the day.

Doing the whole-day check yourself

Run the chart for 00:00 and for 23:59 on the birth date, and use those two test charts for positions only. They show where each separation starts and ends, but two end charts cannot show everything that happens in between, so on their own they never prove that an aspect is absent.

For pairs that include the Moon, check the whole date, not only its ends. The Moon moves about 12° to 15° a day, so its separation from each partner covers a wide range and can enter or leave a window at any hour. Step through the date with a calculator or ephemeris at a fine time step. The calculator accepts whole-minute birth times, so checking all 1,440 minutes, as in the examples above, covers every time it can be given. At each step, subtract the partner's longitude from the Moon's, adding 360 if the result is negative, and see whether the result falls in any of these windows: 0° to 8°, 54° to 66°, 82° to 98°, 112° to 128°, 172° to 188°, 232° to 248°, 262° to 278°, 294° to 306° or 352° to 360°. If no step falls in a window, there is no Moon aspect at any of the times checked. If every step falls in the same window, the aspect holds at all of them. If you cannot run a sweep like this, leave the Moon pair uncertain.

For pairs without the Moon, two matching ends are not proof either. These bodies move slowly, but a planet can slow down, stop and turn around near a station, so a separation can reach a turning point in the middle of the day. Even two slow bodies can sit close enough to an edge to cross it within a day: in London charts for every date from 1980 to 1999, a pair from Jupiter to Pluto, the Nodes and Chiron moved into or out of an orb window between 00:00 and 23:59 on 737 occasions. If a separation without the Moon is close to an edge at either end, check an ephemeris with finer time steps or leave the result uncertain. If the whole-day check cannot settle a case, keep the uncertainty. How to read a chart without a birth time covers the rest of the chart in the same situation.

After the check

If a planet passes, unaspected Sun, Moon and planets has a section for each of the ten. You can also ask the Astrologist about it, as long as you tell it what you found: the chart summary it receives lists only a selection of aspects, so it cannot run this check for you.

Related articles

• Aspect Orbs in Astrology
• Major Aspects in Astrology
• Minor Aspects in Astrology
• Birth Chart Calculator Guide