Where Are We in Every Cycle Right Now?

How to read the cosmic clock

For the models, accuracy and data behind these figures, see the methodology and sources page.

The gauges are grouped from the fastest rhythms to the slowest: the turning day, year and tides; the Moon's months (its phase, its circuit of the constellations, its motion relative to the nodes, and the slow 18.6-year drift of those nodes); each planet's orbit of the Sun; the slow cycles of planets meeting; the eclipse and calendar rhythms; the Sun's activity; and finally deep time.

The rings come in three honest kinds. A solid ring is computed live and exactly from the same astronomical model the rest of this site uses, so it is a true present position: the Moon's phase, the solar year, the spring-neap tides, where each planet sits in its orbit (its heliocentric longitude, measured around the zodiac from the March-equinox point), how far the Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and Neptune cycles have turned, the run-up to the next eclipse, and where this year falls in the 19-year Metonic cycle. When no eclipse is at hand, the eclipse ring draws lighter and carries a countdown tag; it is counting down to the next event rather than marking a position within a cycle.

A ring marked estimate is a solid ring whose exact length varies, so the position is a good approximation rather than an exact one: the sunspot cycle runs anywhere from 9 to 14 years, and the 22-year Hale magnetic cycle is two of those. The two deep-time cards in the last group show a state, not a live phase, because their exact present position is either set by convention or simply not known, so they carry a faint, unfilled ring and report what truly is knowable. The Great Year of axial precession turns so slowly (about 25,920 years) that its zero point is a matter of convention; what is certain is that Polaris is our pole star now, that Vega takes the role in about 12,000 years, and that the March equinox currently lies in the constellation Pisces. And the galactic year, the Sun's 230-million-year orbit of the Milky Way, is known as a length but not as a present phase, so its card counts the roughly 20 laps the Sun has made since it formed rather than marking a position within the current lap.

Want the whole spectrum on one ruler instead? The Astronomical Cycles page plots all 65 from a day to a galactic year, and Cycle Convergence shows how they drift in and out of step.