What a relocation chart is
Your natal chart is two things bolted together: the planets' positions (which depend only on the instant of birth, anywhere on Earth) and the house structure (which depends on the local horizon — latitude and longitude — at that instant). A relocation chart unbolts them: the instant and every planet's sign and degree stay frozen, and only the Ascendant, Midheaven and house cusps are recomputed for the new location.
The result reads as your same life reframed: if your Sun moves from the 11th to the 4th house, tradition says the identical solar theme now plays out at home and in roots rather than in friendship and public circles. It is the standard astrological map of emigration — and unlike astrocartography lines, it gives you a complete twelve-house chart for the new place.
How we compute it
From the fixed birth instant we take the Greenwich-side sidereal time, convert it to the new longitude's local sidereal time, and solve the standard Ascendant and Midheaven formulas for the new latitude using the obliquity of the ecliptic at the date — the same spherical trigonometry the natal engine uses, with no approximation for the horizon change.
The twelve house cusps are then divided from the new Ascendant and MC by the Porphyry quadrant houses (whole-sign available on every chart) system, and each planet (unchanged in sign and degree) is re-slotted into its new house. Because everything derives from one instant and two coordinates, the output is exact arithmetic — you can verify against any professional software that supports location change.
What you get
After entering your birth data and a residence:
- Relocated Ascendant and Midheaven signs with their traditional archetypes, side by side with the natal ones.
- Every planet with its unchanged sign/degree and its house shift shown as H(natal) → H(relocated).
- Moved planets highlighted, each with a one-line contrast of the two house meanings.
- A count of how many of your ten planets actually changed houses for that place.
How to read the relocation
Start at the top: the relocated Ascendant is traditionally the loudest single statement the technique makes — 'who you become there.' A Cancer rising at home that relocates to Capricorn rising is read as the same person arriving with a more adult, structured public face. The relocated MC does the same job for work and reputation.
Then follow the movers, not the stayers. Planets that keep their houses are themes that travel with you unchanged; each planet that jumps houses is a life area re-staged. Personal planets moving matter far more in practice than slow outer-planet shifts, and an angular move (into or out of the 1st/4th/7th/10th) is weighted heaviest. The comparison against the natal chart is the point: unlike a natal chart, a relocation chart is read entirely as a diff.
A worked example, with real numbers
Take a chart cast for 5 May 1990, 9:15 a.m. New York local time (13:15 UTC) — natal Ascendant roughly 9° Cancer, Sun in the 11th, Moon in the 4th. Re-located to Tokyo (35.68° N, 139.65° E) at the same instant, the angles move to Ascendant 3.2° Capricorn and Midheaven 23.3° Libra.
The horizon shift is large enough to re-slot all ten planets: the Sun leaves the 11th for the 4th, the Moon the 4th for the 9th, Venus the 10th for the 3rd, Jupiter the 12th for the 7th, and Saturn — with Uranus, Neptune — crosses from the 7th into the 1st, while the natal 5th-house Pluto lands in the 10th.
A New Yorker moving to Tokyo would, in this technique's language, arrive with a visibly serious (Capricorn rising, Saturn in the 1st) public face and their whole identity sector relocated — the most dramatic diff the tool can produce.
What this tool does not claim
No controlled evidence supports the idea that a re-divided house map changes life outcomes; relocation astrology is a traditional interpretive framework, and we present it as one. The astronomy is exact — the symbolism is inherited, not measured.
The technique also assumes the birth time is right: a relocated Ascendant can change sign with as little as four minutes of birth-time error near a rising sign border. With an unknown time we flag the angles as approximate. All math runs locally in your browser; no birth data is transmitted.
Relocation vs astrocartography vs a second natal chart
Astrocartography maps the whole planet at once and shows where your lines run; the relocation chart is the zoomed-in answer for one chosen city — the same geometry expressed as twelve houses. It is emphatically not a second natal chart: casting a fresh chart for the moment you arrived ('renewal' chart) is a different technique practitioners sometimes layer on top. The standard workflow is: map → rank candidates (Best Locations tool) → relocate the winner → optionally compare with your transits for timing.
Our method in one line
Instant-frozen, horizon-recomputed angles and Porphyry quadrant houses (whole-sign available on every chart) cusps using sub-arcsecond astronomy (VSOP87/ELP via astronomy-engine) obliquity and sidereal-time values. Reviewed by Dr. Amara Osei, Astronomy Reviewer.
Step by step
- 1
Enter your birth data
Date, time and birthplace — the natal chart is cast exactly as our flagship tool does it.
- 2
Choose a residence
Search any city you live in — or are thinking about moving to.
- 3
Read the two angles first
The relocated Ascendant and MC signs, compared with their natal versions, carry the headline.
- 4
Follow the house movers
Highlighted planets are the ones whose life-stage changed; the grey ones travel with you untouched.
Tip — Run the search on two or three candidate cities — the diffs are far more legible side by side.
Frequently asked questions
- Do my planets change signs when I relocate?
- No — and that is what makes the technique clean. Planet signs and degrees depend only on the birth instant. Relocation re-divides the sky around the new horizon, so only the angles, cusps and house assignments move. If a tool shows your Sun changing sign after a move, it is casting a new chart, not relocating.
- How far does the relocated Ascendant actually move?
- Roughly one degree of rising sign per 4° of longitude east or west (the sidereal-time shift), plus a latitude-dependent tilt in the rising-rate. New York to Tokyo is a 209°-longitude jump, which is why the example Ascendant swings from Cancer to Capricorn — a near-perfect inversion.
- Is a relocation chart as valid as my natal chart?
- It is the same chart with the houses recalculated for a different horizon — astronomically identical planets, geometrically different house map. Whether you weight those house changes at all is an interpretive choice within the tradition.
- Can I compare multiple cities?
- Run the tool once per city and read the diffs side by side — the house movers are far more legible when two or three candidate cities are lined up. For a quicker first pass, the Best Astrocartography Locations calculator scores line proximity for dozens of places before you invest in full relocation diffs.
- Is my birth data private?
- Calculations run entirely in your browser. Your birth data is never uploaded, never stored on a server, and never shared. The relocated chart is computed locally in your browser and nothing is uploaded.
Written by
Elena Marchetti
Founder & Staff Astrologer
Methodology reviewed by
Dr. Amara Osei
Astronomy Reviewer
Published 2026-10-01 · Updated 2026-10-01 · Calculated with sub-arcsecond astronomy (VSOP87/ELP via astronomy-engine)