The sky today

How to read the orrery

The Sun is in the middle. The planets stand where they really are in the solar system, seen from above (the orbits are compressed so that everything fits). Our Earth moves along on its own orbit, with the Moon around it.

The ring around it is the zodiac as we see it from Earth. The symbol on the ring marks the direction in which Earth sees the planet, and so the sign the planet is in according to astrology. The dotted line links each planet to its symbol. This also shows why a planet sometimes seems to move backwards (retrograde): Earth is overtaking it.