What are aspects in astrology?

Aspects are angular distances along the ecliptic between two natal longitudes. They are geometry, not fate-lines. If two planets are 90° apart, that is a square. If they are 120° apart, that is a trine. The natal chart lists the ones inside an allowed orb. People search “what are aspects in astrology?” because the wheel’s coloured lines look like a secret language. They are a protractor.

SideraChart draws five major aspects: conjunction (0°), sextile (60°), square (90°), trine (120°), opposition (180°). Orbs are 8° for conjunction and opposition, 6° for square and trine, 4° for sextile. Tighter orbs are louder. The table under the wheel is the same list as the lines, with applying or separating motion.

A conjunction fuses two functions in the same patch of zodiac. A sextile is 60° — a door you still have to walk through. A square is 90° — friction that tends to produce skill if you stay with it, or noise if you do not. A trine is 120° — ease that can go unused. An opposition is 180° — two poles, often projected onto another person or a schedule that pulls both ways.

Keep the verbs concrete. Do not upgrade a square into a curse or a trine into a blessing from elsewhere. You are reading how two chart functions share work. The rest of the chart — signs, houses, the Big Three — tells you which departments that work lands in.

An orb is how far from exact the contact may be and still count. SideraChart’s stack is 8° / 6° / 4° as above. A Sun–Moon conjunction at 7.2° counts; a Mercury sextile at 4.5° does not. Other software uses different orbs, which is why aspect lists disagree even when longitudes match.

Sort by tightness. A 0.3° aspect outranks a 7.9° aspect of the same type. If you are learning, ignore anything near the edge until the tight ones are clear. Exactness is not moral purity; it is volume on the instrument.

Applying means the aspect was getting tighter at birth; separating means it had already peaked and was widening. SideraChart flags this in the natal table. It is a timing nuance inside the birth moment, not a forecast. You still need decent longitudes, which means a decent Universal Time.

Without a birth time, planet-to-planet aspects still exist. Aspects to the Ascendant do not, because there is no Ascendant. The Moon’s aspects near an orb boundary can flip across a day. Unknown time: planets yes, houses no; Moon aspects near 8°/6°/4° maybe. Do not fight with a noon chart over a 5.9° Moon square.

They are not synastry by themselves — synastry is aspects between two charts. They are not transits — transits are today’s planets to natal planets. They are not medical, legal or financial advice. A Mars square Saturn does not prescribe a workout or a lawsuit. It describes friction between initiating heat and structure.

Minor aspects (quincunx, semisquare, and the rest) are not drawn here. If another site shows more lines, it is using a wider catalogue, not a more accurate sky. SideraChart stays with the five majors on tropical longitudes from astronomy-engine (VSOP87), not Swiss Ephemeris.

Stelliums produce stacks of conjunctions. Read the tightest pair first rather than declaring the whole pile one mood. An empty house does not cancel an aspect that happens to involve a planet in another house; aspects ignore walls. Houses need the birth time; aspects between planets do not.

Coloured lines inside the wheel; a sortable table under it. Hide the lines if the drawing is cluttered. Synastry uses the same orbs between two people’s planets. Composite charts have their own midpoints and then their own internal aspects. Daily transits in the cabinet are stored at noon natal time and use the same aspect names against the natal baseline.

When you compare with astro-seek or similar, set tropical, the same time zone, and comparable orbs. A missing aspect is often an orb or a sidereal setting. Placidus vs Whole Sign will not change ecliptic aspects between planets; it will change house-based sentences you might mix in by mistake.

Read applying vs separating as a birth-moment note, then move on. It does not tell you when an event will happen years later. Transits reuse the same aspect names against a moving sky, stored at noon natal time in the cabinet. That is a different clock from the natal applying flag.