Descendant Sign Calculator

Enter your birth date, time and city to find your Descendant sign and the planets that were setting when you were born.

Your Descendant is the point of the zodiac that was setting on the western horizon at the moment you were born. It is always exactly opposite your Ascendant, or rising sign, and it marks the start of the seventh house. Astrologers read its sign as the kind of partner you are drawn to and what you look for in close relationships. Finding it needs your birth date, exact time and birthplace.

How the calculator works

At any moment, half the zodiac is above the horizon and half is below. One degree is coming up in the east: that is the Ascendant. The degree directly across from it is going down in the west: that is the Descendant. The calculator converts your birth time to Universal Time, works out how the sky was turned over your birthplace, and finds both.

Because the two are always 180 degrees apart, the Descendant sign is fixed by the rising sign. Aries rising means a Libra Descendant, Taurus rising means Scorpio, and so on round the wheel. If you already know your rising sign to the degree, your Descendant is the same degree of the opposite sign.

What the calculator adds

Astrologers rarely stop at the sign. This calculator also reports two things they look at next:

• Planets on the Descendant. Any planet within 8 degrees of it was setting as you were born. Such a planet is read as a strong theme in your partnerships, and often as a quality you meet in other people before you see it in yourself.
• The ruler of the Descendant. Every sign has a ruling planet. Where the ruler of your Descendant sign sits in your chart is read as where partners tend to come from and what the relationship is about.

A worked example

Take a birth at 7:30 pm on June 15, 1995 in Chicago. The Ascendant was 13°23′ Sagittarius, so the Descendant was 13°23′ Gemini. Mercury at 9° Gemini and Venus at 6° Gemini were within 8 degrees of it, right at the western horizon. The ruler of Gemini is Mercury, which was at 9° Gemini in the 7th house.

Ten minutes later the Descendant had moved on by 2.1 degrees. The table follows that day through the clock.

Some Descendant signs are more common than others

All twelve signs cross the western horizon once a day, but they do not take equal time over it. Away from the equator the zodiac meets the horizon at a slant, steep for some signs and shallow for others. A sign that takes longer to set is the Descendant for more of each day, so more people are born with it.

The columns run from the equator to the latitude of London, with one southern city. At London's latitude, Aries is on the Descendant for 2 hours 52 minutes a day and Libra for only 51 minutes, so if births are spread evenly round the clock, an Aries Descendant is more than 3 times as common there as a Libra one. South of the equator the pattern is reversed: in Sydney the long stay belongs to Leo. Each column adds up to 23 hours 56 minutes, the time the sky takes to turn once.

Descendant and the seventh house

The Descendant is the cusp, or starting line, of the seventh house, the part of the chart given to marriage, close partnerships and open rivals. In whole sign houses the entire sign your Descendant is in is your seventh house. In systems such as Placidus the seventh house begins at the exact Descendant degree. Either way the sign is the same.

What each Descendant sign means

Each reading names the rising sign that goes with it, because the two are read as a pair: the Ascendant for how you meet the world, the Descendant for whom you look for in it.

The ruler of each Descendant sign

Reviewed by Natal Points. The example and tables on this page were calculated in October 2026.