◐ What was the sky doing on a day I remember?

Most places want your birth data before they show you anything. Umbriel's free Moment Machine wants a moment: a date, or a plain phrase like "yesterday at 3pm". It draws that sky, says three specific things about it, and tells you exactly how sure it is.

• What you'll needNothing. A date, or a phrase like "yesterday at 3pm". No birthday, no place, no account
• What you getThe sky drawn over any moment from 1900 to 2100, three things about it that are true across the whole range your words allow, what each guess cost, the week that followed, and a small scrapbook of moments you name
• CostFree, no account required

There is no form. Type a date, or say it the way you would to a friend: "14 March 2019", "3pm last Tuesday", "two weeks ago", "June 2021". The page says back what it understood, and lists every guess it made.

Three things are said about the sky, and none of them is about you. The Moon (its sign and degree, or both signs if it changed sign, and how lit it was); the rarest true thing up there (an eclipse, a planet standing still, Mercury retrograde, a void Moon); and the tightest angle between two bodies. Each is worked out from the engine, not looked up.

A date alone has no time, so noon is used and the page says so. That costs something, and it says what: the Moon covers about 13 degrees in a day, so it is given as a range, and it may have changed sign. A thing is only said if it holds across the whole range.

"The day I moved" has no date in it, so the page says it cannot know which day that was and asks for one, keeping your words as the name.

No angles and no houses, ever. They turn all the way round in a day and need a place as well as a time. A birth date comes in only if you decide you are curious what a sky like this did to a chart.

Moments you name are kept in a small scrapbook on your own device, and on your life timeline, because a moment you name is a dated event. Each one can be drawn again, with the week that followed.

Nothing is looked up from a table. The words are read in your browser and turned into an instant on your device's clock; the same VSOP87 and ELP-2000 engine that draws every chart on this site then gives the Sun, Moon and planets for that instant, from 1900 to 2100, the years its Pluto formula is good for. Because the words leave room (a date alone is the whole day around noon), the sky is sampled across that whole range, and a sentence is printed only if it is true at every sample. The Moon is given as a sign and a degree range, or as the two signs when it changed sign, with how lit it was; the rarest true thing is chosen using how often each kind of thing is available across a measured year of real sky (the same measurement as the Alibi); and the tightest angle is the closest conjunction, sextile, square, trine or opposition between two bodies other than the Moon, counted only inside 3 degrees for the whole range, a choice that is ours. For a month or a year the Moon and the fast planets cannot be placed, and only what stayed in one sign throughout is said. No angles and no houses are drawn, ever: they need a place as well as a time.