Planetary hours and moon phase
Pick a place and a date. The page works out sunrise and sunset there, splits the day and the night into twelve hours each, and names the planet of every hour.
Nothing is sent and your location is never read. You pick the place and this page does the sums.
Type coordinates instead
Decimal degrees, north and east positive. New York is 40.71 and -74.01.
The day
- Sunrise
- Sunset
- Daylight
The Moon
- Next new moon
- Next full moon
Worked out for noon on the chosen date, in the place's own time.
| Hour | Starts | Ends | Planet |
|---|
| Hour | Starts | Ends | Planet |
|---|
Next hour of a planet
A timing rule you can choose to keep. Nothing here says an hour makes a working stronger.
Accuracy: sunrise and sunset use NOAA's solar equations and came within a minute of the U.S. Naval Observatory's tables in all 30 checks, from 34 degrees south to 64 north. New and full moons follow Meeus and came within a minute of every 2026 date USNO lists. The lit share is good to about 1 percent. Hills, high ground and the far north can move real sunrise further.
What this is
The Working Clock is a free planetary hours calculator with the moon phase, in your browser. Pick a city or type coordinates and a date, and it gives sunrise and sunset there, the day's ruling planet, all 24 planetary hours, the Moon's lit share and the next new and full moon.
How the Working Clock works
Planetary hours are an old timing system. The day from sunrise to sunset is cut into twelve equal parts, and so is the night from sunset to the next sunrise, so an hour runs long in summer days and short in winter ones. Each hour goes to one of the seven classical planets in the order Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon. The first hour of each day belongs to the planet that names the day: Sunday to the Sun, Monday to the Moon, and so on through Saturday and Saturn.
The page works the hours out for the place you choose. Sunrise and sunset come from the equations behind NOAA's Solar Calculator, which follow Jean Meeus's Astronomical Algorithms. The clock times are in that place's own time zone, daylight saving included, from your browser's time zone data. There is no location request and no lookup: you pick the place, or type its latitude and longitude, and nothing leaves the page.
The Moon panel gives the phase, the share of the disc that is lit and the days since the last new moon, for noon at that place on the chosen date, and the dates and times of the next new and full moon. Those instants come from Meeus's method for the true phases. In our checks they landed within a minute of every new and full moon the U.S. Naval Observatory lists for 2026.
Timing is a rule you choose to keep. Chaos magic treats it like any other belief: pick it up for a working, put it down after. Nothing here says a planet's hour makes a working stronger. If you work in one, write it to the Log and see what your own record says.
Working Clock questions
How are planetary hours calculated?
Take the time from sunrise to sunset and divide it by twelve: those are the day hours. Do the same from sunset to the next sunrise for the night hours. The first day hour belongs to the day's ruler, and each hour after it takes the next planet in the order Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, starting over after the Moon.
Why are planetary hours not 60 minutes long?
Because they share out daylight and darkness, which change length through the year. Near midsummer the day hours are long and the night hours short, and near midwinter it is the other way round. At the equinoxes all 24 come close to an hour.
What is the Chaldean order?
The sequence Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon: the classical planets from slowest to fastest as they cross the sky. The name is modern, and the order seems to be a Hellenistic idea rather than a Babylonian one. Run it through 24 hours a day and it gives the order of the weekday names.
Does the page need my location?
No. It never asks for it, and the site does not allow it to. Pick a city from the list or type the latitude and longitude yourself. Everything is worked out on the page and nothing is sent.
How accurate are the times?
Sunrise and sunset came within a minute of the U.S. Naval Observatory's tables in every one of our 30 checks, from 34 degrees south to 64 degrees north. The planetary hours follow from those, so they carry the same minute. New and full moon times came within a minute too. Real sunrise can differ more on high ground, behind hills or far north.
What happens near the poles?
When the Sun does not rise or does not set on the chosen date, there is nothing to divide into twelve, so the page says so and shows no hours. The Moon panel still works.