Moon sign calculator

Your moon sign is the zodiac sign the Moon occupied at the moment you were born. In Vedic astrology, called Jyotish, it is known as your rashi, and it is the sign that matters most. The Moon governs the mind and the emotional life, so your rashi describes how you feel, bond and respond before you think.

This is a different thing from the newspaper sun sign that everyone born in the same month shares. The Moon changes sign about every two and a quarter days, so a moon sign is personal in a way a sun sign can never be. Luna also names the star within the sign, your nakshatra, a finer signature still.

Luna computes your moon sign with the Swiss Ephemeris, the same astronomical engine professional astrologers and space agencies use. From your exact birth minute, your coordinates and the historical timezone of your birthplace, it fixes the Moon’s position to the arc-second, then reads it in the Lahiri sidereal zodiac.

If you skip the time, Luna uses noon. Your moon sign is still right on most days, because the Moon lingers more than two days in each sign. Only when the Moon changed signs on your birthday does the exact minute settle which side of the line you fall on, and adding it takes a few seconds.

The sidereal zodiac measures against the stars’ real current positions in the sky. It runs about 24 degrees behind the Western tropical zodiac, so your Vedic moon sign is often one sign earlier than the one you already know.

The Vedic tradition reads the whole chart from the Moon, which is why Luna starts there rather than with the Sun. Your moon sign is a beginning, not the whole story: it is one of more than 2,000 points in your full Vedic birth chart.