Mystic Portal student tool

Inferior & Superior Planetary Position

Enter your birth moment to see whether Mercury, Venus, and the Moon occupied the nearer or farther half of their orbit—and view each position relative to Earth.

Enter your birth moment

Choose your birthplace from the suggestions. Its historical UTC offset will be set automatically for your birth date and time; you can still correct it manually if needed.

Birthplace search uses Open-Meteo geocoding, based on GeoNames; only your birth moment is sent through Mystic Rebels to NASA/JPL Horizons. It is not connected to your customer account; the anonymous result may be cached temporarily.

Place the planets in space.

Your Mercury, Venus, and Moon results will appear here with a diagram of each position relative to Earth.

How it is calculated

A visible 180° spatial model.

For Mercury and Venus, a plane perpendicular to the ecliptic passes through the Sun and divides each orbit into an Earth-facing half and a far-side half. For the Moon, a plane perpendicular to the ecliptic passes through Earth and divides its orbit into a Sun-facing half and an anti-solar half. A position within 90° of the reference direction is inferior; a position beyond 90° is superior.

Inferior Moon and Superior Moon are Mystic Rebels teaching terms. Astronomy does not ordinarily classify every lunar position with those names.

Positions and distances come from NASA/JPL Horizons.