Planetary Transit Timeline Calculator
Most transit tools answer one question at a time: where is Jupiter, when does Saturn change sign, when is the next Mercury retrograde. When I plan anything that matters, I need all of them at once, in the order they happen. This timeline gives exactly that: every sign change, every station, every New and Full Moon, every eclipse and every combustion of the coming months, one under the other, with the time in your own city.
The filters above the timeline switch each kind of event on and off without reloading the page. The Moon's own sign changes are off to begin with; it changes sign every couple of days and would bury everything else. Switch it on when you are picking a day rather than a month.
How Far Ahead to Look
One month is the view for picking dates: a meeting, a journey, a purchase. Three months shows the shape of the season, which is where most of the useful planning happens: a Mercury retrograde, a Venus combustion, the next eclipse. Six months and a year are for the slow planets. Jupiter, Saturn, Rahu and Ketu change sign rarely, and when one of them does, it is worth knowing a year in advance.
The Events in the Timeline
Sign changes. The moment a planet enters a new sign, and so a new house of your chart. A small R beside it means the planet enters while retrograde, slipping back into the sign before.
Retrograde and direct. The two stations of a planet's backward loop. A planet is slowest, and presses hardest on its degree, around these days; matters it rules tend to stall at the first station and start moving again after the second.
Combust and rising. When a planet comes too close to the Sun it is asta, combust, and its significations go quiet until it rises again. For Venus and Jupiter this decides the wedding season.
New and Full Moon. Amavasya and Purnima, the two poles of the lunar month, with the sign and nakshatra the Moon is in. Most Hindu fasts and festivals are fixed by them.
Eclipses. Solar eclipses fall on an Amavasya and lunar eclipses on a Purnima, when the Sun and Moon are close to Rahu and Ketu. The timeline gives the moment of greatest eclipse and the sign and nakshatra it falls in, which tells you whose charts it touches most.
Sidereal or Tropical
The sidereal zodiac of Vedic astrology is fixed to the stars and uses the Lahiri ayanamsa here; the tropical zodiac of Western astrology is fixed to the seasons. The two now start about 24 degrees apart, so every sign change falls on a different date, three weeks apart for the Sun and months apart for the slow planets. Retrogrades, Moon phases and eclipses happen at the same moment in both; only the sign they fall in differs. Combustion is a Vedic idea, so read it from the sidereal view.
Planning Around the Timeline
I keep three rules when I fix a muhurta. No new beginning on an eclipse day, or in the days just around it. No wedding while Venus or Jupiter is combust. And no signature on an important contract while Mercury is stationing, the few days around its retrograde and direct stations. Everything else depends on the person's own chart, but these three hold for everyone, and the timeline shows all of them at a glance.
For your own chart, read each sign change from your Moon sign and your Lagna. If you do not know either, your free kundli gives both, and its transit section counts every planet house by house for you.
The Timeline in My Own Year
My Lagna is Leo and my Moon is in Virgo, and this autumn's timeline is a busy one for me. Mercury turns retrograde in Libra in the last week of October and direct again in the middle of November. Libra is the third sign from my Lagna, the house of communication and documents, and the second from my Moon, the house of earnings and speech. So I have kept that stretch for finishing work already begun, and moved the new agreements to after Mercury is direct.
At the end of October Jupiter enters Leo, my rising sign, the most protective transit Jupiter can make over a Lagna. A few weeks later Rahu moves into Capricorn, the sixth from my Lagna, where it helps you win against competition. Seen one by one these are three separate dates; seen in one timeline they tell a clear story: finish and consolidate through the retrograde, then build from the start of the new year.
