freeastro

A free Python library that calculates astrological birth charts (natal charts).

Good for:

• Building horoscope or astrology apps
• Automating birth chart generation for multiple people
• Adding astrology features to an existing web service
• Learning astrology calculations programmatically

Give it a birth date, time, and place — get back the positions of planets and house cusps as Python objects or JSON.

Install

pip install freeastro

The first time you run freeastro, it automatically downloads a ~17 MB planetary data file (NASA DE421 ephemeris). After that, everything works offline.

Usage

Step 1 — Create a subject

Pass the birth data of the person you want to calculate a chart for:

from freeastro import AstrologicalSubject

subject = AstrologicalSubject(
    name="John Doe",
    year=1990,
    month=1,
    day=15,
    hour=12,      # 24-hour format, local time
    minute=0,
    latitude=35.6762,    # Tokyo: positive = North
    longitude=139.6503,  # Tokyo: positive = East
    tz_str="Asia/Tokyo", # timezone string
)

How to find latitude, longitude, and timezone

For other cities, right-click on Google Maps to get coordinates. Find the timezone string on this list.

Notes on signs:

• South latitudes are negative (e.g. Sydney: -33.8688)
• West longitudes are negative (e.g. New York: -74.0060)

Step 2 — Read planet positions

# Sun sign and degree
print(subject.sun.sign)         # "Capricorn"
print(subject.sun.sign_degree)  # 24.70  (degrees within that sign)
print(subject.sun.house)        # 9      (which house the Sun is in)

# Check if a planet is retrograde
print(subject.mercury.retrograde)  # True

# Available planets
print(subject.moon)
print(subject.mercury)
print(subject.venus)
print(subject.mars)
print(subject.jupiter)
print(subject.saturn)
print(subject.uranus)
print(subject.neptune)
print(subject.pluto)

Step 3 — Read house cusps

# Ascendant (1st house cusp)
print(subject.first_house.sign)  # "Taurus"

# Midheaven (10th house cusp) as ecliptic longitude
print(subject.mc)   # 296.92

# All 12 houses
for house in subject.houses:
    print(f"House {house.number}: {house.sign} {house.sign_degree:.1f}°")

Step 4 — Export the data

# As a Python dict
data = subject.to_dict()

# As a JSON string (pretty-printed)
json_str = subject.to_json()
print(json_str)

Example JSON output (excerpt):

{
  "subject_name": "John Doe",
  "year": 1990,
  "month": 1,
  "day": 15,
  "planets": [
    {
      "name": "Sun",
      "sign": "Capricorn",
      "position": 294.70,
      "sign_degree": 24.70,
      "house": 9,
      "retrograde": false
    }
  ],
  "asc": 43.12,
  "mc": 296.92
}

Data fields

Planet

House

Troubleshooting

The download hangs or fails on first run freeastro downloads a ~17 MB file from a NASA server. If it fails, check your internet connection and try running again. The file is cached after the first successful download.

I get a ZoneInfoNotFoundError for my timezone The tz_str value must be an exact match from the tz database. Common mistakes: "JST" should be "Asia/Tokyo", "EST" should be "America/New_York".

The planet positions look off Double-check that:

• hour and minute are in local time, not UTC
• South latitudes are negative (e.g. -33.86 for Sydney)
• West longitudes are negative (e.g. -74.00 for New York)

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'freeastro' Run pip install freeastro first. If you're using a virtual environment, make sure it's activated.

Requirements

• Python 3.10 or later
• Internet connection on first run (to download the ephemeris)

License

MIT — free to use for any purpose, including commercial projects.