Eclipses in Astrology: Solar and Lunar Eclipses and Eclipse Seasons

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An eclipse is a New Moon or a Full Moon with one extra condition: the Sun, the Moon and the Earth line up closely enough that one body's shadow falls on another. At a solar eclipse the Moon passes in front of the Sun as seen from part of the Earth. At a lunar eclipse the Full Moon moves through the Earth's shadow. Both are real astronomical events with dates, types and times that astronomers calculate years ahead.

Astrologers have watched eclipses for as long as they have watched the sky. This page covers what an eclipse is, why eclipses arrive in seasons about six months apart, how the Moon's nodes come into it, and how an astrologer might read an eclipse degree against a birth chart. Being born during an eclipse, and the prenatal eclipse technique, are covered separately in born during an eclipse.

Educational page. Eclipses are an astrological topic discussed by Astrologist.com, not a feature 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 use for comparison, but whether an eclipse happened is checked separately. Eclipse dates, types and times on this page come from NASA's eclipse tables. The chart positions were calculated offline with the same planetary routines the free chart uses. You can ask the Astrologist about eclipses as a concept or about eclipse degrees you give it; it does not detect eclipses from chart data.

Solar eclipses

A solar eclipse can only happen at a New Moon, when the Moon stands between the Sun and the Earth. Most New Moons pass a little above or below the Sun, so nothing is hidden. When the Moon crosses close enough to the line between the Sun and the Earth, its shadow reaches the Earth's surface and part or all of the Sun is covered for observers inside that shadow.

NASA's tables list four types:

• Total: the Moon covers the whole disc of the Sun along a narrow path.
• Annular: the Moon is too far from the Earth to cover the Sun completely, so a ring of sunlight stays visible along the central path.
• Hybrid: total along part of the path and annular along the rest.
• Partial: the Moon's central shadow misses the Earth, so the Sun is only partly covered anywhere it is seen.

Every solar eclipse is seen only from part of the Earth. The total phase is limited to a path that is usually a few hundred kilometres wide or less, and the partial phase covers a broader region around it. Elsewhere, the day of a solar eclipse looks like any other day.

Eye safety: never look at the uneclipsed or partly eclipsed Sun without proper solar viewing protection, such as eclipse glasses or a safe solar filter. Ordinary sunglasses are not enough. Only the brief total phase, for observers inside the path of totality, is a different case. Follow NASA's eclipse safety guidance before watching any solar eclipse.

Lunar eclipses

A lunar eclipse can only happen at a Full Moon, when the Earth stands between the Sun and the Moon. Most Full Moons pass above or below the Earth's shadow. When the Moon moves through it, NASA's tables classify the eclipse as one of three types:

• Total: the whole Moon passes into the Earth's dark central shadow, the umbra, and often turns a coppery red.
• Partial: only part of the Moon enters the umbra.
• Penumbral: the Moon passes only through the paler outer shadow, the penumbra, and the dimming can be hard to notice.

A lunar eclipse can be seen from anywhere on the night side of the Earth while the Moon is above the horizon, so it is visible from a much wider area than a solar eclipse. It is safe to look at with the naked eye.

Eclipse seasons and the Moon's nodes

The Moon's orbit is tilted about 5° to the Sun's apparent path, the ecliptic. The orbit crosses the ecliptic at two points, the Moon's nodes. Astrologers call them the North Node and the South Node, and their meaning in a birth chart is covered in North Node and South Node meaning.

Because of that tilt, a New Moon or Full Moon usually happens with the Moon somewhat north or south of the ecliptic, and no shadow lines up. An eclipse occurs only when a New Moon or Full Moon falls while the Moon is close to the ecliptic plane, which means close to one of its orbital nodes. The nodes do not cause anything. They are simply the places where the geometry allows the three bodies to line up.

The Sun passes each node once in an eclipse year of about 346.6 days, so it is near the nodal line about every 173 days. The stretch of weeks around each pass is an eclipse season. Each season usually holds two eclipses, a solar and a lunar about two weeks apart, and sometimes three. The season of July and August 2027, for example, has three eclipses in NASA's predictions: a penumbral lunar eclipse on 18 July, a total solar eclipse on 2 August and a penumbral lunar eclipse on 17 August.

Whether a particular New or Full Moon in a season becomes an eclipse, and of which type, depends on the exact Sun, Moon and Earth geometry. That is what NASA's eclipse tables calculate. This page uses those tables to decide which eclipses happened, never a chart measurement.

The Mean Node is a chart convention, not the eclipse test

Astrologist.com uses the Mean Node, a smoothed average position of the Moon's node, as its standard nodal point for chart interpretation. The Moon's actual node crossing wobbles around that average. So the distance between the Sun and the site's Mean Node on an eclipse day is a useful picture of where the eclipse sits on the chart's nodal axis, but it is not the astronomical criterion for whether an eclipse took place. For that, check NASA's tables for the date.

Eclipses move backward through the signs

The nodes drift backward through the zodiac and take about 18.6 years to go all the way round, which is the cycle behind the nodal return. The eclipse seasons drift backward with them, so each year's eclipses fall a little earlier in the zodiac than the year before. The solar eclipse of 17 February 2026 fell at 28°50' Aquarius; the one of 6 February 2027 falls at 17°37' Aquarius. Over a year and a half or so, the eclipses move from one pair of opposite signs into the previous pair, which is why astrologers talk about eclipses "in" an axis such as Leo and Aquarius or Virgo and Pisces.

The NASA catalogues also group eclipses into Saros series. Eclipses in one series repeat about every 18 years and 11 days with similar geometry. You do not need the Saros to read an eclipse astrologically, but it explains the series numbers listed in NASA's tables.

The August 2026 eclipse season, worked through

NASA's tables list two eclipses in the August 2026 season. Clock times below are the time of greatest eclipse, the instant NASA uses for the eclipse's central moment, not its start or end. NASA gives that time in Terrestrial Dynamical Time (TD); the Universal Time (UT) shown here subtracts the 75 seconds of TD minus UT used in NASA's catalogue for 2026.

The positions were calculated with the production routines at each greatest-eclipse instant. The last row is a chart illustration only: it shows where each eclipse sits relative to the site's nodal axis. It is not what made either event an eclipse. NASA's tables settle that.

Read as a pair, the two eclipses show the season's shape:

• Two weeks apart. The solar eclipse came at the New Moon of 12 August and the lunar eclipse at the following Full Moon, 15 to 16 days later.
• Same end of the axis for the Sun. At both eclipses the Sun stood on the South Node side of the site's axis: 10.3° from the Mean South Node at the solar eclipse and 5.4° at the lunar eclipse. At the solar eclipse the Moon was beside the Sun on that side; at the lunar eclipse the Moon stood opposite, 5.4° from the Mean North Node.
• The axis changes sign inside the season. Between the two eclipses the Mean Node moved backward out of the Virgo-Pisces axis into the Leo-Aquarius axis, so the South Node was in Virgo at the first eclipse and in Leo at the second.

The same solar eclipse appears on Sun conjunct South Node for a different reason: at London noon that day the Sun was 10.6° from the South Node, outside the 8° conjunction orb the free chart uses for that contact, so an eclipse day and a Sun-Node conjunction day are not the same thing. The figures on that page are for London noon, not greatest eclipse, which is why they differ slightly from the table above.

Solar and lunar eclipses in astrological reading

Older traditions often read eclipses as omens for rulers and kingdoms. Astrologist.com does not read them that way. In the modern psychological approach this site follows, an eclipse is read as a reflective timing marker, a stronger version of a New or Full Moon, with no outcome attached.

• A solar eclipse is a New Moon on the nodal axis. Astrologers often read it like an emphasised New Moon: a time when themes connected with the sign and house where it falls may come into focus and new intentions are set. The Sun and Moon together near one end of the nodal axis links the theme to the growth and habit story of the Nodes; the natal version of that picture is on Sun conjunct North Node and Sun conjunct South Node.
• A lunar eclipse is a Full Moon on the nodal axis. Astrologers often read it like an emphasised Full Moon: a time when something already under way may become clearer, and the pull between the two opposite signs is easier to notice.
• Between seasons the Sun stands roughly square to the nodal axis, and no eclipse can happen. The natal version of that position is Sun square the Lunar Nodes.

These are tendencies some people find useful for reflection. An eclipse does not decide anything, does not make a period good or bad for decisions, and does not predict a particular event.

An eclipse versus an ordinary New or Full Moon

Every month brings a New Moon and a Full Moon, and astrologers read each one by sign and house. An eclipse differs in one way that can be checked: it happens near the nodal axis and is listed in NASA's tables. Astrologers who work with eclipses usually give them more attention than an ordinary lunation and read them as part of a series that moves backward through a pair of signs over a year and a half or so. Whether that extra weight is warranted is a matter of astrological practice, not of astronomy.

Where an eclipse degree falls in your chart

Like any transit, an eclipse can be compared with your natal chart. A simple orb-free way to do it:

1. Note the eclipse degree. For a solar eclipse, the Sun and Moon share almost the same degree; use either. For a lunar eclipse, note both: the Sun's degree and the Moon's degree in the opposite sign.
2. Compare it with your natal placements. Read your planets, Nodes and, if your birth time is reliable, your angles from the free birth chart, and write down the distance in degrees between the eclipse degree and each one. Report the raw distance, nothing more.
3. Note the house, only with a reliable birth time. If your birth time is reliable, find which natal house contains the eclipse degree. Without one, the houses are not known, so leave the house out.

This page sets no threshold for when an eclipse "counts" against a natal point, and it does not borrow the free chart's natal aspect orbs for this purpose. Distances are given in degrees so you can decide for yourself how much weight a near or far placement deserves.

Example. Ruben, the example chart used across these guides (London, 5 January 1993, 12:00, here taken as a recorded time), compared with the August 2026 eclipses:

• The solar eclipse degree, 20°02' Leo, is 2.8° from Ruben's natal Chiron at 22°48' Leo and falls in his 5th house.
• At the lunar eclipse, the Moon's degree, 4°51' Pisces, is 3.2° from his natal Venus at 1°38' Pisces; the Sun's degree, 4°54' Virgo, is 12.1° from natal Chiron, the nearest natal point.
• Both lunar eclipse degrees sit within a tenth of a degree past his 6th and 12th house cusps (4°47' Virgo and 4°47' Pisces). With a birth time just one minute later, those cusps move past the eclipse degrees and both would fall in the 5th and 11th houses instead. This is why the house step needs a reliable time.

The Nodes' own movement through the natal houses, which carries the eclipse seasons with it, is covered in Lunar Node transits through the houses.

Checking an eclipse yourself

1. Find the date in NASA's eclipse tables. They list the date, type and time of greatest eclipse for every solar and lunar eclipse, past and predicted. Future eclipses in those tables are NASA-calculated astronomical predictions, not astrological forecasts.
2. Note the time standard. NASA's decade tables give greatest eclipse in TD, about a minute ahead of UT in recent decades.
3. Separate occurrence from visibility. An eclipse can be listed for a date without being visible from where you are. NASA's tables give the region of visibility for each one.
4. For the zodiac degrees, use an ephemeris for the greatest-eclipse instant, or the Sun and Moon positions of a chart cast for that moment.

The site's calculation choices are listed on the methodology page.

Next steps

To check whether a birth fell on an eclipse date, during an eclipse or after one, and how astrologers use the prenatal eclipse, read born during an eclipse. To read the nodal axis in your own chart, open the free birth chart and look for N.Node and S.Node. You can ask the Astrologist about an eclipse as a concept, or about an eclipse degree you have looked up, alongside your chart.

Related articles

• Born During an Eclipse
• North Node and South Node Meaning
• Mean Node vs True Node
• Sun Conjunct North Node
• Sun Conjunct South Node
• Sun Square the Lunar Nodes
• Nodal Return
• Lunar Node Transits Through the Houses