Born During an Eclipse: Eclipses and the Prenatal Eclipse in a Birth Chart

← Back to Birth Charts

"Born during an eclipse" sounds like one simple fact, but it hides three different questions. Did an eclipse happen on your birth date? Were you born while the eclipse itself was under way? And what does the eclipse look like in your chart, by Moon degree and house? Each question needs different information, and only the first can be answered without a birth time.

This page separates those questions, shows what a solar or lunar eclipse birth looks like in a chart, and explains the prenatal eclipse, a technique some astrologers use for everyone, eclipse birth or not. What eclipses are and why they come in seasons is covered in eclipses in astrology.

Educational page. Eclipse births and prenatal eclipses are astrological topics discussed by Astrologist.com, not features of the site. The free birth chart does not detect, label or classify eclipses, eclipse seasons or prenatal eclipses. It shows the Sun, the Moon and the Mean Node (N.Node and S.Node), which you can compare by hand, but whether an eclipse happened is checked separately in NASA's eclipse tables. The worked figures below were calculated offline with the same planetary routines the free chart uses. You can ask the Astrologist about the concept or about eclipse degrees you give it; it does not detect eclipses from chart data.

Three separate claims

Keep these apart. Each one needs more information than the one before it.

1. An eclipse fell on your birth date. No birth time is needed for this first check, but NASA catalogues eclipses by Universal Time (UT), so an eclipse late on one UT date can fall on the next calendar date where you were born, or the other way round. If the eclipse is near 00:00 UT, use your birthplace and its time zone, or look at the adjacent UT date, to see which local calendar date it fell on.
2. You were born during the eclipse itself. This needs a reliable birth time, converted to Universal Time, and the eclipse's timing from NASA. If your birth time is unknown, you cannot claim that your birth coincided with the eclipse, only that it fell on the same date.
3. Anything that depends on the Moon's degree or the houses. The Moon moves about 12° to 15° a day, so its exact degree, and sometimes its sign, depends on the birth time. Houses and the house an eclipse falls in need a reliable time too. Without one, the free chart places the Moon at local noon as a date reference only, and that noon position is never your birth moment.

A fourth question is separate again: whether the eclipse was visible from your birthplace. A solar eclipse is seen only from part of the Earth, and a lunar eclipse only from where the Moon is above the horizon. An eclipse can be listed for your birth date, and even be under way at your birth time, without being visible where you were born. NASA's tables describe where each eclipse could be seen; check that separately if it matters to you.

On this page, "born during an eclipse" means claim 2. "Born on an eclipse date" means claim 1.

What an eclipse birth looks like in a chart

An eclipse is a special New Moon or Full Moon, so an eclipse birth is a special case of the natal Moon phase.

Solar eclipse birth. The Sun and Moon are together in the same degree, a Sun conjunct Moon New Moon chart, and both lie near one end of the nodal axis. The New Moon phase itself is described in born under a waxing Moon, and the Moon beside a Node in Moon conjunct North Node and Moon conjunct South Node.

Lunar eclipse birth. The Sun and Moon are in opposite degrees, a Sun opposite Moon Full Moon chart, with the Sun near one Node and the Moon near the other. The Full Moon phase is described in born under a waning Moon.

These chart pictures are a hint, not proof. Many New and Full Moons near the site's Mean Node axis are not eclipses, and the site's Mean Node is a smoothed calculation convention rather than the Moon's actual node crossing. The chart can tell you that a birth is worth checking. NASA's tables tell you whether an eclipse happened.

How astrologers tend to read it

Astrologers who give eclipse births extra weight usually read them as an emphasised version of the New or Full Moon phase, with the Sun-Moon relationship and the nodal axis both taking a larger part in the reading. A solar eclipse birth is often read as the New Moon's focus on one sign and theme, tied to the growth and habit story of the Nodes. A lunar eclipse birth is often read as the Full Moon's pull between two opposite signs, with the Nodes adding the same story.

These are tendencies for reflection. An eclipse birth does not set a life path, does not mark a person out, and does not predict events. The rest of the chart, read sign by sign and aspect by aspect, carries most of the reading in any case.

How to check your own birth

1. Find your birth date in NASA's eclipse tables. NASA's decade tables list every solar and lunar eclipse, with date, type and the time of greatest eclipse. If no eclipse is listed within a day of your birth date, you were not born during one, and you can skip to the prenatal eclipse below.
2. Convert your birth time to Universal Time. NASA's decade tables give greatest eclipse in Terrestrial Dynamical Time (TD), about a minute ahead of Universal Time in recent decades; the catalogues list the exact difference for each eclipse.
3. Compare your birth time with the eclipse's timing. The time of greatest eclipse is the central instant, not the start or end. For lunar eclipses NASA's tables also give how long the partial phase, and the total phase if there is one, lasted. For a solar eclipse, the global event and the local eclipse seen from your birthplace have different start and end times, which NASA's eclipse pages and calculators give separately.
4. Read the Sun, Moon and Nodes from your chart. On the free birth chart, the Sun and Moon should be close to the same degree (solar) or opposite degrees (lunar), near the N.Node and S.Node axis. If your birth time is unknown, check the Moon across the whole birth date as in Moon phase without a birth time.
5. Check visibility separately, only if you want to know whether the eclipse could be seen where you were born.

The prenatal eclipse

Most people are not born during an eclipse, but everyone is born after one. Some astrologers use the prenatal eclipse: the eclipse that came before a birth, compared with the natal chart. Conventions vary. For this explanation, the prenatal eclipses are the last solar eclipse and the last lunar eclipse before birth. It is an optional technique some astrologers use, not part of Astrologist.com's standard chart, and the free chart does not find or show prenatal eclipses.

The method is the same orb-free comparison as on eclipses in astrology:

1. Find the last solar and the last lunar eclipse before the birth in NASA's tables.
2. Note the zodiac degrees of the Sun and Moon at greatest eclipse.
3. Write down the raw distance in degrees between those eclipse degrees and the natal placements. This page sets no threshold for when a distance "counts".
4. Note the natal house containing each eclipse degree only if the birth time is reliable.

Astrologers who use the technique tend to read the sign and house of the prenatal eclipses as background themes in the chart. Closeness to a natal planet or Node, by itself, is not given special meaning here.

Worked example: Ruben

Ruben is the example chart used across these guides: London, 5 January 1993, 12:00 (12:00 UT), here taken as a recorded time. Calculated with the production routines, his Sun is at 15°10' Capricorn, his Moon at 5°43' Gemini and his Mean North Node at 20°10' Sagittarius.

Claim 1 and claim 2: not an eclipse birth. NASA's tables list no eclipse on or near 5 January 1993, so Ruben was not born on an eclipse date and not during an eclipse. His chart agrees with that picture: the Moon is 140.6° ahead of the Sun, a waxing Gibbous phase rather than a New or Full Moon, and the Sun is 25.0° from the Mean North Node. This is the ordinary case.

His prenatal eclipses. Dates, types and greatest-eclipse times are from NASA's tables; TD minus UT for these eclipses is 59 seconds in NASA's catalogue. Positions are calculated at the greatest-eclipse instant.

The lunar eclipse fell late on 9 December in Universal Time. In time zones an hour or more ahead of UT, such as central Europe, it was already 10 December, which is why it is sometimes dated 9/10 December. The partial solar eclipse was not visible from London, and Ruben had not been born yet; visibility plays no part in the prenatal technique as used here.

Raw distances to Ruben's natal chart:

• The solar eclipse degree, 2°26' Capricorn, is 2.0° from his natal Mercury at 4°25' Capricorn, 12.3° from his natal North Node and 12.7° from his natal Sun.
• At the lunar eclipse, the Sun's degree, 18°10' Sagittarius, is 2.0° from his natal North Node at 20°10' Sagittarius. The Moon's degree, 18°12' Gemini, is 2.0° from his natal South Node at 20°10' Gemini and 12.5° from his natal Moon at 5°43' Gemini.

The closeness to his natal Nodes is not a coincidence that needs interpreting. Every eclipse falls near the nodal axis, and the Mean Node moves only about 1.5° a month, so eclipses a few weeks before any birth fall in the general area of that chart's natal Nodes. Ruben's came about two and four weeks before he was born.

Houses, with a reliable time. Taking 12:00 as Ruben's recorded time, the solar eclipse degree falls in his 9th house, about 6° past the 9th cusp. At the lunar eclipse the Moon's degree falls in his 2nd house and the Sun's degree in his 8th. Without a reliable birth time, none of these house placements would be known.

Claim 3, if the time were unknown. Ruben's natal Moon moves from 29°03' Taurus at 00:00 to 12°29' Gemini at 23:59 on his birth date, so even its sign would be uncertain. The distance from the lunar eclipse Moon at 18°12' Gemini to his natal Moon would then only be known as somewhere from 5.7° to 19.1°. The eclipse dates and their degrees stay the same; what changes is everything compared with his own Moon and houses. The general approach to a chart without a time is in how to read a chart without a birth time.

Next steps

Open the free birth chart, note your Sun, Moon and N.Node, and check your birth date in NASA's tables. What eclipses are, how eclipse seasons work and how to read an eclipse degree against your chart are in eclipses in astrology. The site's calculation choices, including the Mean Node, are on the methodology page. You can ask the Astrologist about eclipse births or prenatal eclipses as a concept, or about eclipse degrees you have looked up, alongside your chart.

Related articles

• Eclipses in Astrology
• Natal Moon Phases Explained
• Sun Conjunct Moon
• Sun Opposite Moon
• Moon Conjunct North Node
• Moon Conjunct South Node
• Moon Phase Without a Birth Time
• How to Read a Chart Without a Birth Time