Jupiter takes close to twelve years to go once round the zodiac. So you would expect it to give each sign one year, or one part in twelve of its time. That would be 8.33 percent. Libra gets more than that, and more than any other sign. I measured it over 67 full laps of Jupiter, 1607 to 2402. Jupiter spends 9.14 percent of its time in Libra. Aries, at the low end, gets 7.57 percent.
The cause is a point in space, not a trait of the sign. Jupiter moves slowest at the far end of its orbit, and that far end now sits in Libra. The last time Jupiter reached it, in February 2017, the planet stood in Libra as seen from Earth. The next time, in December 2028, it will stand there again. This page gives the measure, the method, the dates, and what the old books say.
Do you have Jupiter in Libra? Every stay from 1933 to 2064
Jupiter comes back to Libra about every twelve years. Each visit lasts a little over a year. Most visits are one clean run. Some are not. Once a year, Jupiter turns retrograde for about four months. Retrograde means the planet seems to slide backward against the stars. Nothing turns round in space. Earth, on the inside lane, simply passes Jupiter, the way a slow car seems to slip back as you pass it. When that backward slide falls near the edge of a sign, Jupiter steps out and comes back.
Here is every stretch of time with Jupiter in Libra from 1933 to 2064. Times come from JPL Horizons, the NASA service for planet positions. They are in UTC, the world clock used by astronomers, and in New York time. They are rounded to the nearest minute. If you were born inside one of these ranges, you have Jupiter in Libra.
| Jupiter enters Libra | Jupiter leaves Libra | Where it goes next. |
| September 10, 1933, 05:10 UTC (01:10 in New York) | October 11, 1934, 04:55 UTC (October 10, 23:55 in New York) | Into Scorpio for good. |
| August 25, 1945, 06:05 UTC (02:05 in New York) | September 25, 1946, 10:19 UTC (06:19 in New York) | Into Scorpio for good. |
| December 13, 1956, 02:17 UTC (December 12, 21:17 in New York) | February 19, 1957, 15:38 UTC (10:38 in New York) | Back into Virgo. |
| August 7, 1957, 02:11 UTC (August 6, 22:11 in New York) | January 13, 1958, 12:52 UTC (07:52 in New York) | Ahead into Scorpio, for now. |
| March 20, 1958, 19:14 UTC (14:14 in New York) | September 7, 1958, 08:52 UTC (04:52 in New York) | Into Scorpio for good. |
| November 15, 1968, 22:44 UTC (17:44 in New York) | March 30, 1969, 21:36 UTC (16:36 in New York) | Back into Virgo. |
| July 15, 1969, 13:30 UTC (09:30 in New York) | December 16, 1969, 15:55 UTC (10:55 in New York) | Ahead into Scorpio, for now. |
| April 30, 1970, 06:43 UTC (02:43 in New York) | August 15, 1970, 17:58 UTC (13:58 in New York) | Into Scorpio for good. |
| October 27, 1980, 10:10 UTC (05:10 in New York) | November 27, 1981, 02:19 UTC (November 26, 21:19 in New York) | Into Scorpio for good. |
| October 10, 1992, 13:26 UTC (09:26 in New York) | November 10, 1993, 08:15 UTC (03:15 in New York) | Into Scorpio for good. |
| September 25, 2004, 03:24 UTC (September 24, 23:24 in New York) | October 26, 2005, 02:52 UTC (October 25, 22:52 in New York) | Into Scorpio for good. |
| September 9, 2016, 11:18 UTC (07:18 in New York) | October 10, 2017, 13:21 UTC (09:21 in New York) | Into Scorpio for good. |
| August 24, 2028, 05:09 UTC (01:09 in New York) | September 24, 2029, 06:24 UTC (02:24 in New York) | Into Scorpio for good. |
| December 12, 2039, 22:05 UTC (17:05 in New York) | February 20, 2040, 05:35 UTC (00:35 in New York) | Back into Virgo. |
| August 5, 2040, 22:03 UTC (18:03 in New York) | January 11, 2041, 19:33 UTC (14:33 in New York) | Ahead into Scorpio, for now. |
| March 21, 2041, 00:01 UTC (March 20, 20:01 in New York) | September 6, 2041, 00:12 UTC (September 5, 20:12 in New York) | Into Scorpio for good. |
| November 15, 2051, 14:44 UTC (09:44 in New York) | March 30, 2052, 20:30 UTC (16:30 in New York) | Back into Virgo. |
| July 14, 2052, 00:23 UTC (July 13, 20:23 in New York) | December 15, 2052, 06:53 UTC (01:53 in New York) | Ahead into Scorpio, for now. |
| April 30, 2053, 04:32 UTC (00:32 in New York) | August 14, 2053, 07:30 UTC (03:30 in New York) | Into Scorpio for good. |
| October 27, 2063, 15:34 UTC (11:34 in New York) | November 26, 2064, 12:00 UTC (07:00 in New York) | Into Scorpio for good. |
Born within a day of an edge? Check your birth time against the UTC column. A child born on the evening of September 24, 2004, in New York was born after 23:24. That child has Jupiter in Libra. A child born an hour earlier has it in Virgo.
Your Sun sign comes from your birthday. Your Jupiter sign comes from your birth year and month. They are not the same thing. For the sign itself, see our page on the Libra sign. For all twelve, start with our guide to the zodiac signs.
The last stay and the next one
The last stay was one clean run. Jupiter came in from Virgo on September 9, 2016. It left for Scorpio on October 10, 2017. In between, it made one full backward loop, and the whole loop stayed inside Libra. The next stay starts on August 24, 2028, and it will be a clean run too. Here are both, step by step.
| Event | Time in UTC | Time in New York | Where Jupiter stands. |
| Jupiter enters Libra | September 9, 2016, 11:18 | September 9, 2016, 07:18 | At 0 degrees of Libra. |
| Jupiter turns retrograde | February 6, 2017, about 06:50 | February 6, 2017, about 01:50 | At 23 degrees 8 minutes of Libra. |
| Jupiter turns direct | June 9, 2017, about 14:10 | June 9, 2017, about 10:10 | At 13 degrees 13 minutes of Libra. |
| Jupiter enters Scorpio | October 10, 2017, 13:21 | October 10, 2017, 09:21 | At 0 degrees of Scorpio. |
| Jupiter enters Libra | August 24, 2028, 05:09 | August 24, 2028, 01:09 | At 0 degrees of Libra. |
| Jupiter turns retrograde | February 10, 2029, about 13:00 | February 10, 2029, about 08:00 | At 27 degrees 25 minutes of Libra. |
| Jupiter turns direct | June 13, 2029, about 21:10 | June 13, 2029, about 17:10 | At 17 degrees 30 minutes of Libra. |
| Jupiter enters Scorpio | September 24, 2029, 06:24 | September 24, 2029, 02:24 | At 0 degrees of Scorpio. |
A station is the moment Jupiter seems to stand still before it turns. It moves so slowly then that the exact minute is soft. That is why the table says “about” for the turns. The entry and exit times are sharp, because Jupiter crosses the sign line at full speed. Our two routes agree on them to within ten minutes.
Before Libra comes Virgo. Our page on Jupiter in Virgo covers the stay that ends on August 24, 2028. After Libra comes Jupiter in Scorpio, which starts the moment this one ends.
Libra holds Jupiter longer than any other sign
Here is the share of time Jupiter spent in each sign over 67 full laps of Jupiter, 1607 to 2402. It is seen from Earth, in the tropical zodiac. That is the zodiac tied to the seasons, where Aries starts at the spring equinox.
| Sign | Share of Jupiter’s time | Rank out of twelve. |
| Libra | 9.14 percent | First. |
| Virgo | 9.06 percent | Second. |
| Scorpio | 9.03 percent | Third. |
| Sagittarius | 8.76 percent | Fourth. |
| Leo | 8.58 percent | Fifth. |
| Cancer | 8.48 percent | Sixth. |
| Capricorn | 8.16 percent | Seventh. |
| Gemini | 7.94 percent | Eighth. |
| Aquarius | 7.88 percent | Ninth. |
| Pisces | 7.71 percent | Tenth. |
| Taurus | 7.68 percent | Eleventh. |
| Aries | 7.57 percent | Twelfth. |
So Jupiter in Libra is not rare. It is the most common Jupiter sign of all. About one person in eleven is born with it.
Now look at single stays. From 1600 to 2400, Jupiter made 68 stays in Libra. Of those, 46 were clean runs. A clean run lasts 396 days, give or take half a day. That is almost a clock. Each clean run holds one full retrograde loop, so each one covers the same share of the cycle.
The other 22 stays were split. In a split stay, Jupiter enters, slips back into Virgo or ahead into Scorpio, and then returns. Those stays gave Libra from 384 to 399 days in total. The longest came in 2371 to 2373, with 399 days. From first entry to final exit, a split stay can stretch over 639 days, or about 21 months. The median stay, the middle value when you line them all up, is 396 days.
Be careful with the shortest numbers. The shortest piece of any kind was a dip of just 31 days, in 1650. That was not a crossing. Jupiter slid back from Scorpio into Libra during a retrograde turn, then moved on again. The shortest full stay was the 384 days of 1731 to 1732. That stay lost eleven days to a brief dip back into Virgo.
The far point of the orbit sits in Libra
Jupiter’s path round the Sun is not a perfect circle. It is a slightly stretched oval. The planet is closest to the Sun at one end, called perihelion. It is farthest at the other end, called aphelion. Kepler showed in 1609 that a planet moves fastest when close to the Sun and slowest when far away. Jupiter’s oval is only a little stretched. Still, it crosses the sky about 21 percent faster near perihelion than near aphelion. The gap between Libra and Aries on the chart above is also about 21 percent. The oval explains nearly all of it.
Seen from the Sun, the aphelion now lies near 14 to 15 degrees of Libra. That is the middle of the sign. So Libra sits right on the slow stretch, and Virgo and Scorpio sit on each side of it. They collect a little less.
Here is the part no table of traits will tell you. Jupiter reaches aphelion once per lap, about every 11.86 years. From Earth we see Jupiter a little off its true spot, because we watch it from a moving planet. The shift is at most about ten degrees. Since the aphelion sits mid-Libra, Jupiter almost always looks to be in Libra when it gets there.
I checked all 68 aphelion dates from 1600 to 2400. In 64 of them, Jupiter stood in Libra as seen from Earth. Every one from 1744 to 2361 falls in Libra, 53 in a row. Three early ones, in 1637, 1720 and 1732, fell in late Virgo. One, in 2373, will fall just past the Scorpio line.
| Aphelion | Where Jupiter stood, seen from Earth | Which Libra stay. |
| Around April 14, 2005 | Near 13 degrees of Libra | The stay of 2004 to 2005. |
| Around February 16, 2017 | Near 23 degrees of Libra | The stay of 2016 to 2017. |
| Around December 29, 2028 | Near 25 degrees of Libra | The stay of 2028 to 2029. |
| Around November 18, 2040 | Near 22 degrees of Libra | The split stay of 2040 to 2041. |
The far point is a soft target. Jupiter’s distance barely changes for weeks around it. So the dates above are good to a day or two, not to the hour. For people born in 2016 and 2017, it means something simple. Your Jupiter sits on the slowest stretch of its whole orbit.
Libra has not always been first
The far point does not stay put. It creeps forward through the tropical signs by about 1.6 degrees each century. Most of that drift comes from the slow wobble of Earth’s axis. That wobble moves the start of Aries, and with it every sign line. A small part comes from the pull of the other planets on Jupiter’s orbit.
I measured the drift three ways. The dates of greatest distance give 1.58 degrees per century. JPL’s orbit data give 1.70. The standard mean orbit tables used by astronomers give 1.61. At that pace, the far point needs about 1,900 years to cross one sign.
So I asked when Libra took the lead. I tracked the length of every stay in Virgo, Libra and Scorpio, from 500 BC to AD 4500. Then I smoothed the result over a couple of centuries, since single stays jump around. Virgo led until about AD 1300. The far point then sat near 3 degrees of Libra. Libra has led since then. It should keep the lead until about AD 3100, when Scorpio takes over.
The margins at those crossovers are thin, under one day per stay. So read the dates as a century or so either way. The long run is clear, though. Libra is the slow sign of our era, and has been for seven centuries.
How I measured it
You can check all of this. Here is the method.
First route. I used the astronomy-engine library, a free program that computes planet positions. I found Jupiter’s place from Earth once a day from 1590 to 2410. Each time it crossed a sign line, I narrowed the moment down by halving the gap, to within a second. I added up the exact time spent in each sign over 67 full laps of Jupiter, 1607 to 2402, from one entry into Aries to the same entry 67 laps later. I did not use random sampling. For the far point, I found each date when Jupiter’s distance from the Sun peaked.
Second route. I pulled Jupiter’s daily place from JPL Horizons, which runs on NASA’s DE441 tables. JPL serves Jupiter itself only from 1600 to 2200. For the shares, I used its point for Jupiter’s system as a whole, one reading every three days over the same 67 laps. It gave Libra 9.145 percent. My first route gave 9.144 percent. From 1601 to 2199, the first route found 51 stays, from 384 to 399 days, with a median of 396. For the far point, I used JPL’s orbit data and its distance from the Sun. For the far past and far future, I used JPL’s point for Jupiter’s system as a whole. The two routes agree on both crossovers.
Last, the window. I used 67 full laps, close to 800 years, not one lifetime. A window that stops partway through a lap can hold one extra stay in a sign, and that tilts the ranking. Sixty years is not enough to rank the signs fairly.
No major rank in Libra, but two small footholds
Old astrology gives each planet a rank in each sign. The ranks are called dignities. A planet is at home in its own sign, called its domicile. It is honored in its exaltation. It is weak in its detriment, the sign across from its home. It is low in its fall, the sign across from its exaltation.
Jupiter’s homes are Sagittarius and Pisces. Its exaltation is Cancer. Its detriments are Gemini and Virgo, and its fall is Capricorn. Libra is none of these. Libra is the home of Venus and the exaltation of Saturn. It is the detriment of Mars and the fall of the Sun. So in Libra, Jupiter holds no major rank at all. Ptolemy lays out these homes and exaltations in the Tetrabiblos, in the second century. William Lilly prints the same scheme in his table of dignities in Christian Astrology, in 1647.
Jupiter’s day house gets less time than Libra, and our guide to Jupiter in Sagittarius shows how the odds of having it there change with your Sun sign.
There are smaller ranks, though, and here Jupiter has two.
The first is a bound, also called a term. Each sign is cut into five unequal slices, and each slice goes to one planet. Jupiter owns one slice of Libra in every table I checked. The degrees differ from table to table. The Egyptian bounds, which Ptolemy quotes in the Tetrabiblos, give Jupiter 14 to 21 degrees of Libra. Lilly’s table gives Jupiter 11 to 19 degrees. Lilly counts a planet in its own bound as worth two points.
The second is a face, also called a decan. Each sign is cut into three slices of ten degrees. The last slice of Libra, from 20 to 30 degrees, belongs to Jupiter. Lilly counts it as one point, the smallest rank there is.
What about the triplicity? A triplicity is a group of three signs of one element, with shared rulers. Libra is an air sign, with Gemini and Aquarius. Ptolemy gives the air signs to Saturn by day and Mercury by night. Lilly does the same. So in their scheme, Jupiter has no share in air. The older Hellenistic scheme of Dorotheus of Sidon adds a third ruler to each group. For air, that third ruler is Jupiter. Vettius Valens follows that scheme in his Anthologies. So your answer depends on whose rules you use.
Look at the two maps side by side. On the map of rank, Libra is nearly blank for Jupiter. On the map of time, Libra comes first. Rank and time on the clock have nothing to do with each other. Our main guide to Jupiter in astrology covers the planet’s ranks across all twelve signs.
What the placement means
In the old books, a planet in a sign it does not own is a guest in someone else’s house. The owner of the house is its host. Demetra George uses this picture of host and guest in her work on ancient astrology. Chris Brennan explains the same idea in Hellenistic Astrology.
In Libra, Jupiter’s host is Venus. That pairs the two planets the old authors called benefics, the helpful ones. Valens ties Jupiter to friends, gifts, honors and trust. Venus rules Libra, a sign of scales, deals and partners. So Jupiter in Libra puts growth in the hands of other people. Gains come through a partner, a contract, a fair deal or a good word from someone. Liz Greene and Stephen Arroyo both read Jupiter as a search for meaning. Here that search runs through the question of what is fair.
The weak point comes from the same place. Lilly lists waste, excess and misplaced trust among Jupiter’s faults. In Libra, that can look like saying yes to keep the peace. It can look like trusting a partner’s terms without reading them. The fix is the one Libra itself teaches: weigh both sides, then decide.
A chart is more than one sign. Robert Hand makes the point that a planet’s sign, house and aspects work together. So read Jupiter in Libra with three more facts. Where is Venus, its host? Which house holds Libra in your chart? Was Jupiter moving forward or backward when you were born?
Reading your own Jupiter in Libra
Start with the house. In the whole-sign system, each sign fills one house. Your rising sign fills the first house, and the rest follow in order. So your rising sign tells you where Libra falls.
| Rising sign | House of Libra | Where Jupiter’s growth shows. |
| Aries rising | Seventh house | Partners and open rivals. |
| Taurus rising | Sixth house | Daily work and health. |
| Gemini rising | Fifth house | Children, play and romance. |
| Cancer rising | Fourth house | Home, family and roots. |
| Leo rising | Third house | Siblings, short trips and speech. |
| Virgo rising | Second house | Money and what you own. |
| Libra rising | First house | Body, look and self. |
| Scorpio rising | Twelfth house | Solitude and hidden help. |
| Sagittarius rising | Eleventh house | Friends and hopes. |
| Capricorn rising | Tenth house | Career and public name. |
| Aquarius rising | Ninth house | Travel, study and belief. |
| Pisces rising | Eighth house | Shared money and debts. |
Next, check the direction. About 31 percent of the time Jupiter spends in Libra, it is retrograde. So nearly one in three people with this placement were born during a backward loop. Lilly scores a retrograde planet as weaker in its condition. Its rank by sign stays the same.
Then check the degree. From 20 to 30 degrees, Jupiter is in its own face. In Lilly’s table, from 11 to 19 degrees, it is in its own bound. Those are small points, but they are points.
Last, compare it with the planets that share the sign. Mars in Libra is in its detriment there, while Jupiter is simply a guest.
Frequently asked questions
When was Jupiter last in Libra?
From September 9, 2016, 11:18 UTC to October 10, 2017, 13:21 UTC. In New York, that is 07:18 and 09:21 on the same days.
When is Jupiter next in Libra?
From August 24, 2028, 05:09 UTC to September 24, 2029, 06:24 UTC. In New York, the entry comes at 01:09 and the exit at 02:24.
How long does Jupiter stay in Libra?
A clean stay lasts 396 days, give or take half a day. Split stays gave Libra 384 to 399 days from 1600 to 2400. Some stretched over 21 months from first entry to final exit.
Why does Jupiter spend more time in Libra than in any other sign?
Its orbit is a slight oval, and it moves slowest at its far point from the Sun. That point now lies near 14 to 15 degrees of Libra. Libra has held first place since about 1300.
Is Jupiter strong in Libra?
Not by the major ranks. Libra is not its home, exaltation, detriment or fall. Jupiter has a bound and the last ten degrees as its face. In the scheme of Dorotheus, it also has a share in the air signs.
Is Jupiter in Libra rare?
No. It is the most common Jupiter sign. Jupiter spends 9.14 percent of its time there over 67 full laps of Jupiter, 1607 to 2402.
Go deeper with your own chart
Dates are a start. Your chart is the rest. An Astrovision report reads your Jupiter with its sign, its house, its host and its aspects. It comes as a written guide and as a personal podcast you can play on a walk.