What's retrograde right now
Right now Saturn, Neptune and Pluto are retrograde. Computed from the ephemeris when this page was last built, not copied off a list — a planet is retrograde here when its apparent longitude is genuinely decreasing.
Is Mercury retrograde?
No
It next turns retrograde on . It's in ♌︎ Leo today.
Every planet, right now
| Planet | In | Motion | Next turn |
|---|---|---|---|
| ☿︎Mercury | ♌︎ Leo | direct+2.00°/day | retrograde |
| ♀︎Venus | ♎︎ Libra | direct+0.88°/day | retrograde |
| ♂︎Mars | ♋︎ Cancer | direct+0.64°/day | retrograde |
| ♃︎Jupiter | ♌︎ Leo | direct+0.21°/day | retrograde |
| ♄︎Saturn | ♈︎ Aries | ℞ retrograde-0.05°/day | direct |
| ♅︎Uranus | ♊︎ Gemini | direct+0.01°/day | retrograde |
| ♆︎Neptune | ♈︎ Aries | ℞ retrograde-0.02°/day | direct |
| ♇︎Pluto | ♒︎ Aquarius | ℞ retrograde-0.02°/day | direct |
Mercury retrograde dates
Three or four times a year, about three weeks each. Dates are shown in your own timezone, and a station near midnight can therefore land on the day either side of what another site prints.
What retrograde actually means
Nothing goes backwards. A planet appears to reverse when Earth overtakes it, or is overtaken — the same effect as a car you pass on the motorway appearing to slide backwards against the hedge. What is measurably true is that the planet's apparent longitude, seen from here, decreases for a while. That is the definition this page computes, to the minute of each turn.
The astrological reading of that is a separate claim, and a milder one than the internet suggests: Mercury governs how things are thought through and passed on, so the weeks it spends going back over the same degrees are traditionally spent going back over the same ground — revising, re-reading, finishing what was left. It is not a reason to cancel anything.
A planet retrograde in a birth chart is a different matter again: it was retrograde for everyone born that month, and it describes a function that works inwardly rather than one that is broken. Cast your chart — free — and every retrograde planet in it is marked ℞.