Why a planet appears to go backward

• Across is sidereal longitude. Where the graha sits on the sidereal zodiac — the same longitude your Kundli is computed from. Gold verticals are rasi boundaries; the ticks are degrees.
• Up is ecliptic latitude. How far north or south of the ecliptic the graha is. It is the second dimension that turns the reversal into a loop instead of a line retraced.
• The vertical scale is stretched, and says so. The loop is far wider than it is tall, so latitude is drawn ×5 — stated on the graphic itself, the way a geological cross-section labels its vertical exaggeration. The shape is real; the proportions of this one axis are not.
• Gold is the computed flag. The gold arc is exactly the frames the engine flagged retrograde. The legs into and out of it stay ink, because the true turning point falls somewhere inside them — the plot does not pretend to know where.
• Every dot is a frame. No smoothing, no curve fitting: consecutive computed positions joined by straight lines. Nothing between the dots is drawn.

Earth is on the inside track. We round the Sun in 365 days; Saturn needs about 10,759. So we catch up to it and pass it on the inside — and while we pass, the direction we have to look to see it swings backward against the far-off stars. Saturn never slows, never stops, never reverses. What reverses is where we are looking from.

It is the same effect as a near tree sliding backward past a far mountain when you drive by: parallax. Two objects moving at different speeds, seen from one of them.

If both orbits lay in exactly the same plane, the backward slide would retrace the same line and you would see a to-and-fro, nothing more. They do not. Across this window the engine computes Saturn's ecliptic latitude from -2.71° to -2.13° — the outbound and return branches pass at different heights, and the track opens into a loop.

Retrograde is not a mood that descends on a graha. It is what passing looks like — so it happens exactly when the graha is nearest to us. The same frames give Saturn its closest geocentric distance of this window on 2028-10-29: 8.228 AU, against 10.155 AU at the edges. The loop and the close approach are one event seen two ways.

Key rows from the 33 computed frames (one every 10 days). Every value below is the engine's, unrounded beyond three decimals; the full series is the plot above.

• The flag is computed, not looked up. Our charts derive retrogression from the change in longitude either side of the instant, and mark it ᴿ. It is one of the values in every Kundli, every dasha readout, every matching report.
• Jyotish reads that flag as vakri. A vakri graha is classically read as carrying its significations in an inward, delayed, or re-worked way — and different authorities weigh it differently. Where we state a rule, we state whose rule it is.
• Nothing physical happens to you. Our line of sight swings; the graha does not stop. That is geometry, not force. So this page has no warnings, no windows to survive, no list of what not to sign.
• We will not sell you fear about it. Retrograde periods are the most fear-sold weeks in popular astrology. Here they are a passing — the nearest, brightest part of a graha's cycle.

This plot is one graha over one window. The sky wheel puts all nine at their real sidereal longitudes for any moment you like — the ᴿ marks are the same computed flag.

See the whole sky wheel →

Or check your own chart for a ᴿ: compute your free Kundli →

Apparent geocentric path of each graha from /v1/sky at 00:00 UTC per frame: sidereal longitude (Lahiri True Chitra Paksha) against ecliptic latitude, with the engine's own retrograde flag and its geocentric distance. One canonical loop per graha, the window padded either side of the retrograde run. Station dates are the FIRST and LAST retrograde frame, so each is exact to within one step; the true station lies between that frame and its neighbour. Computed 2026-07-30. Cite freely with a link to this page.