Planetary Hours Calculator for Today

The live panel above answers this from your selected city. It highlights the current planetary hour, shows when it started, when it ends, and counts down to the next hour. If you change the date, the page becomes a full planetary hour chart for that solar day.

The planet ruling the first hour after sunrise is the ruler of the weekday. From there, each successive hour hands the baton to the next planet in Chaldean order (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon), cycling until the next sunrise.

You can hear part of this history in the weekday names. French mardi is Mars day. Italian mercoledì is Mercury day. English keeps Saturday and Sunday directly, gives Monday to the Moon, and uses Germanic deity names for the other planetary weekdays.

Scroll up. The table shows every hour of your solar day, from sunrise to the next sunrise. Each row names the ruler, the start time, and the end time. The current hour is highlighted with a live countdown. If you are choosing whether to act right now, check the void of course moon calendar alongside this table so you know whether the Moon is actively applying or already between signs.

Two things to notice. First, the hour lengths differ. Day hours (sunrise to sunset) and night hours (sunset to next sunrise) divide their respective intervals into twelve equal parts, but the daylight and nighttime rarely match. In New York on December 21, each day hour runs about 45 minutes while each night hour stretches to 75. Six months later, on June 21, the pattern flips. Hour lengths only line up with standard clock hours within a week of each equinox.

Second, the day changes ruler at sunrise, not at midnight. If you're awake at 2am on a Thursday morning, you're still operating in Wednesday's cycle (Mercury's day). Thursday starts when the Sun rises. This surprises people used to thinking in calendar days. Planetary timing runs on solar days, not civil days.

Planetary hours are not fixed 60-minute blocks. They divide the daylight from local sunrise to local sunset into twelve day hours, then divide sunset to tomorrow's sunrise into twelve night hours. A table for New York will not match a table for Los Angeles, London, Sydney, or Reykjavik on the same date.

This is why a location-aware calculator matters. The hour ruler follows the same Chaldean sequence everywhere, but the start and end times move with your actual horizon. Even two cities in the same time zone can have different planetary hour boundaries if their sunrise and sunset times differ.

Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon. That's the order. It isn't arbitrary.

Traditional sources order the seven classical planets by their apparent speed in the geocentric model: Saturn slowest, then Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon fastest. Modern writers often call this the Chaldean order, though that label should not be treated as proof that every later planetary-hour detail comes directly from Babylonian practice.

In the usual planetary-hour method, the first hour after sunrise belongs to the weekday ruler, then each following hour continues through that same sequence. That is the method this calculator implements.

Each weekday takes its name from the planet ruling its first hour after sunrise. Romance languages preserve the Latin planetary names directly. English kept Saturday and Sunday, swapped in Norse deities for Tuesday through Friday, and gave Monday to the Moon.

When the hour matches the day (Jupiter hour on Thursday, Venus hour on Friday, Saturn hour on Saturday), many practitioners treat the symbolism as especially coherent for simple hour work. It is still only one timing factor. A full election also checks the chart, the Moon, the condition of the planet involved, and the actual activity you are beginning.

Seven planets, seven distinct electional moods. The summaries below draw on broad traditional correspondences for the classical planets, but they are Augurine activity guides rather than a one-to-one citation for every task. Each planet's dedicated guide goes further.

Four inputs: today's date, your coordinates, today's sunrise, and today's sunset (plus tomorrow's sunrise for the night portion). Example for New York on April 24, 2026.

1. Find sunrise and sunset. In New York, sunrise is 6:04am EDT and sunset is 7:44pm EDT.
2. Compute day length. Sunset minus sunrise gives about 819 minutes of daylight (13 hours 39 minutes, rounded for display).
3. Divide daylight by 12. 819 / 12 ≈ 68 minutes. Each day hour runs about 68 minutes.
4. Repeat for the night. Sunset to next sunrise (6:03am EDT, April 25) runs 619 minutes. Divided by 12, each night hour is about 52 minutes.
5. Identify the day ruler. April 24, 2026 is a Friday. Friday belongs to Venus, so Venus rules the first hour after sunrise.
6. Walk the Chaldean sequence. Starting from Venus, count forward through Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, wrapping as needed. Your first four hours run Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, starting at 6:04am EDT.
7. Keep going through the night. The 13th hour (the first hour after sunset) continues the Chaldean rotation from wherever the 12th day hour landed. No reset at sunset.

The calculator above does this for any date and city. Running through it once by hand is the fastest way to internalize what the tool is computing.

Polar regions. Above the Arctic Circle in June, the Sun never sets. Below it in December, the Sun never rises. Traditional planetary hours break down because there is no sunrise or sunset to divide. Practitioners handle this by falling back to 60-minute equal hours, or by referencing a lower-latitude sunrise. Neither is fully satisfying. Above 66 degrees latitude in June or December, treat planetary hours as symbolic rather than precise for those weeks.

Daylight Saving Time. The Sun doesn't know about clocks. When civil time jumps, sunrise and sunset in local clock time shift by an hour, and the planetary hours shift with them. The calculator handles this automatically. Any printed table you made last week stops being accurate at 2am on the transition Sunday.

Equinoxes. Around March 20 and September 22, day and night are roughly equal worldwide. Each planetary hour runs close to 60 minutes. This is the one window where planetary hours align with standard clock hours, which makes it the cleanest reference point for sanity-checking a manual calculation.

High latitudes outside polar extremes. In Reykjavik or Anchorage, summer day hours can stretch past 100 minutes while winter night hours shrink below 40. The math works; the rhythm is unusual. A 100-minute Venus hour is a long, slow Venus.

Solar position. Sunrise and sunset come from an inlined Meeus/NOAA-style solar formula using the standard refraction adjustment for apparent sunrise. This should be treated as minute-level timing, not as certified observational data. At polar dates where sunrise or sunset is undefined, the calculator returns unavailable rather than inventing equal hours.

Hour division. The interval from sunrise to sunset divides into 12 equal day hours. The interval from sunset to the next sunrise divides into 12 equal night hours. Hour boundaries are computed in milliseconds, then displayed as local clock times.

Chaldean rotation. The first hour of the day is assigned to the weekday ruler (Sun on Sunday, Moon on Monday, through Saturn on Saturday). From there, each successive hour moves one position along the Chaldean sequence. Twenty-four hours cover three full cycles plus three extras, which is why the first hour of the next day lands three positions further along. After seven days, you return to the same ruler. That's the mathematical origin of the seven-day week.

Privacy. The initial table is pre-rendered on our server for a default city (New York) and cached. Once you pick or save a location, all per-location computation runs in your browser. Your saved city stays on your device; we do not read your IP or your browser's geolocation on the server.

Most planetary hour tools give you a table and stop there. Two ways this one tries to earn trust.

Source-level transparency. The computation is documented: Jean Meeus solar position, Chaldean rotation from the day ruler, equal twelfths of daylight and nighttime, and a clear unavailable state for polar dates. Per-planet guidance is framed as traditional symbolism adapted into practical prompts, not as a guarantee that one hour can carry an entire election.

Electional framing, not correspondence lists. The per-planet guidance tells you what a given hour is for AND what to skip, because classical electional astrology is as much about avoidance as about timing. Mars hours aren't universally bad; they're specifically unsuited for delicate negotiation. Saturn hours aren't universally good; they're specifically unsuited for creative kickoffs. You get a working tool, not a correspondence cheat sheet.

Each hour ruler has its own history, electional catalog, and cautions. The hour pages go further than the summaries above:

• Hour of the Sun: Visibility and leadership: useful for work that should be seen.
• Hour of the Moon: Care and home: tend family, cook, rest, or take a short trip.
• Hour of Mars: Action and drive: can suit hard tasks, exercise, or competition.
• Hour of Mercury: Communication and commerce: send messages, make plans.
• Hour of Jupiter: Growth and wisdom: seek opportunities, travel, learn, or teach.
• Hour of Venus: Connection and ease: beautify, socialize, reconcile.
• Hour of Saturn: Discipline and structure: organize, focus, plan long-term.

The hub page, planetary hours and the days of the week, pulls all seven together with the history, the Chaldean mathematics, and the weekly cycle in one place.