About Moon and Rising
Moon and Rising is an astrology site built on computed data: birth charts, Moon and rising signs, sky calendars and compatibility, each worked out by our own engine and labelled with the method behind it. Astrology is a symbolic language, not a science. We're exact about the astronomy and honest about the interpretation.
The engine
Planet positions come from astronomy-engine, an open-source library of published astronomical models. House cusps, the lunar nodes and Black Moon Lilith are computed in-house from the formulas in Jean Meeus's Astronomical Algorithms, and Chiron from a table of NASA JPL Horizons data.
What checks it
- Swiss Ephemeris, the library behind astro.com: we compare our positions, house cusps, sign changes, stations and Ascendants with its outputs.
- The U.S. Naval Observatory's published equinoxes and solstices.
- NASA's Five Millennium Canon of Solar and Lunar Eclipses (Espenak and Meeus).
- NASA JPL Horizons, for Chiron.
Each comparison is an automated test with a tolerance set before the first comparison. A page prints a time only as precisely as its test supports, usually to the minute.
House systems
Charts default to Placidus, the system most reference sites use, and you can switch to Whole Sign, Equal, Koch or Porphyry on the chart itself. Every chart names the system it uses. Above 66.5° latitude Placidus and Koch break down, so those charts switch to Whole Sign and say so. No house system is the real one: they are different conventions for dividing the sky.
How the readings are written
Our interpretive text is drafted with software assistance, then checked by fixed rules: the astrological facts it states, and things it must never say, such as predictions of illness, doom or how a relationship will end. What happens next depends on the kind of page, and each page's own note says which.
- Birth-chart sign readings, the planet-in-sign pages, and the Moon and rising sign readings: read and edited in full by our writers before publication.
- The planets-in-houses block of the birth-chart reading: checked against our voice guidelines by an automated reviewer before publication; no person reads each one.
- Moon, retrograde and eclipse pages: checked against our voice guidelines by an automated reviewer before publication; no person reads each one.
- Sign-pair compatibility pages and the synastry calculator: checked against our voice guidelines by an automated reviewer before publication; no person reads each one.
Astrology is a symbolic language
Controlled studies have not found that astrological placements predict personality or relationships, and we don't claim they do. We treat a chart as a vocabulary for reflection: we're exact about where the planets were, and honest that what they mean is interpretation.
Corrections
If you find a mistake, such as a wrong time or position or a reading that says something it shouldn't, write to hello@moonandrising.com. We check it against our sources and fix it. When the engine was wrong, the fix reaches every page it feeds.
Contact
General questions: hello@moonandrising.com. Privacy questions and deletion requests: privacy@moonandrising.com, as the privacy policy explains.