Void of Course Moon: How Long, How Often (2026-2028)

On 28 October 2026, the day this page was published, the Moon was void of course in the tropical zodiac from 20:21 IST the evening before, when it made its last aspect in Taurus (its square with Jupiter), until 06:31 IST, when it entered Gemini. The next stretch will begin on 30 October 2026 at 03:13 IST and end at 07:35, when the Moon enters Cancer.

Those two times come from a table of all 481 of the Moon’s sign stays from 2026 to 2028, computed from the JPL DE421 ephemeris in both the tropical and the sidereal (Lahiri) zodiac, and under both of the planet lists in use. Below are the counts that table gives: how often the Moon is void, how long each stretch lasts, how much of the time it adds up to, and how far the answer depends on which zodiac and which list a calendar uses.

What Void of Course Means in Western Astrology

In Western astrology the Moon is called void of course from the moment it makes its last exact major aspect to a planet while in a sign until the moment it enters the next sign. The major aspects are the five Ptolemaic angles between the Moon and the planet: 0° (conjunction), 60° (sextile), 90° (square), 120° (trine) and 180° (opposition), measured in ecliptic longitude. Modern void-of-course tables use exact aspects in this way, and they differ over the planets counted. The traditional list stops at Saturn: the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The modern list adds Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Older horary practice counts an aspect as soon as the Moon is within an orb of it rather than at the exact angle; that version is not computed here.

The idea comes from the Western tradition. The Parashari texts the site works from do not use it, and nothing in the site’s panchang turns on it.

How Often Is the Moon Void of Course?

Every time it changes sign. The Moon enters a new sign 160 times in 2026, 160 in 2027 and 161 in 2028, once every 2.3 days on average (the stays run from 2.0 to 2.5 days, because the Moon’s speed varies). Each of the 481 stays ends with a void stretch, under every list and in both zodiacs, because the last aspect in a sign always comes some time before the sign ends. So the answer to “how often” is about every two and a quarter days, and the more useful question is how long.

Added up, the stretches cover about a fifth of all time: 20.2% of the three years in the tropical zodiac with the modern list, and between 19.3% and 21.8% under the other three combinations.

How Long Is the Moon Void of Course?

The typical stretch is about eight hours: 8.2 hours at the median in the tropical zodiac with the modern list, 8.1 hours in the sidereal. The mean is longer, 11.0 hours, because a minority of stretches run on for a day or more and pull it up. More than a third of the tropical stretches, 38%, last over twelve hours, and about one in ten lasts over a day. At the other end, 30 of the 481 last under an hour. The shortest tropical one, on 25 November 2027, lasts about 5 minutes; the shortest sidereal one, on 5 July 2027, lasts under a minute, because the Moon’s sextile with Mars fell just before it crossed the sign boundary.

With the modern list the longest tropical stretch is 46.9 hours, from 09:22 IST on 8 February 2027 to 08:18 IST on 10 February 2027. With the traditional list there is one sign stay in each zodiac in which the Moon makes no major aspect at all, so the whole stay is void: Leo from 19:13 IST on 4 January 2026 to 22:26 IST on 6 January 2026, 51.2 hours, in the tropical zodiac, and Virgo from 11:45 IST on 11 March 2028 to 11:53 IST on 13 March 2028, 48.1 hours, in the sidereal. Because the stay before each of these also ends void, a calendar shows one unbroken void stretch running from the last aspect in the previous sign to the next entry. Add the three outer planets and neither stay is empty any more.

Year by Year, 2026 to 2028

Every column uses the modern list. The tropical median moves from 6.8 hours to 10.7 hours between the three years, so a rule of thumb taken from one year will not fit the next. What sets the length is where the planets stand: the Moon’s last aspect in a sign falls when it reaches the degree, in that sign, that sits at one of the five angles to some planet, and the planets move on from year to year.

What Uranus, Neptune and Pluto Change

Adding the outer planets can only shorten a stretch, never lengthen one, since it adds aspects and removes none. In practice it changes few of them. In the tropical zodiac 36 of the 481 stretches start later with the modern list (29 because of Uranus, 7 because of Neptune, none because of Pluto), by 11.7 hours on average. The median falls from 9.2 hours to 8.2 hours and the share of time void from 21.8% to 20.2%. In the sidereal zodiac 38 stretches change (25 Uranus, 13 Pluto, no Neptune), by 8.5 hours on average; the time share falls from 20.5% to 19.3% and the median does not move at all. Either way the outer planets cut less than two percentage points off the time void.

Tropical and Sidereal Void Stretches Mostly Do Not Coincide

An aspect is an angle between two bodies, so it falls at the same instant whichever zodiac is used. The sign boundaries are another matter. Sidereal signs begin about 24° further along the ecliptic (the Lahiri ayanamsa; the ayanamsa page gives its value year by year), so the Moon reaches each sidereal boundary 9 to 12 hours before the next tropical one. The same aspects are then cut into different sign stays, and the last aspect in a tropical sign is often not the last one in the sidereal sign the Moon is crossing at the same time.

Counted with the modern list, the Moon is void 20.2% of the time in the tropical zodiac and 19.3% in the sidereal, but only 7.1% of the time in both at once. Only about a third of the tropical void time, 35%, is also sidereal void time, and the Moon is void in one zodiac or the other 32.4% of the time. Of the 481 tropical stretches, 280 do not overlap a sidereal one at all.

A worked case. On 1 November 2026 the tropical Moon will make its last aspect in Cancer, its square with Venus, at 03:29 IST, and will be void until it enters Leo at 09:48. In the sidereal zodiac the Moon will have entered Cancer only 3.5 hours before that square, at 00:00 IST on 1 November 2026, so the same aspect will be an early one in a sidereal stay that has barely begun. The Moon will go on to make further aspects, and its sidereal void stretch will not start until its conjunction with Mars at 19:18 IST on 2 November 2026; it will end at 03:46 IST on 3 November 2026 with the entry into sidereal Leo. For those 6 hours on 1 November 2026, a tropical calendar will show the Moon void and a sidereal count will not.

Void of Course Moon Calendar: November 2026 to January 2027

This list is tropical and uses the modern planet list, the one that includes Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. In these three months the traditional list gives the same start for every stretch, so one column serves both. Times are IST, truncated to the clock value; another ephemeris or program can differ from them by a little. As a check on its sign entries, the computation behind this table first reproduced all 17 spans of the site’s Panchak list, which runs from the Moon’s entry into sidereal Aquarius to its entry into sidereal Aries.

Of these 41 stretches, the longest will run 44.9 hours, from 11 Dec, 00:42 to 12 Dec, 21:35, and the shortest 1.0 hour on 24 November 2026. The site’s moon phase calendar gives the quarters and full moons over the same months in IST.

Born During a Void of Course Moon

The arithmetic can give one answer here: what share of the time the Moon is void. Over these three years it is about one moment in five, 20.2% in the tropical count and 19.3% in the sidereal, and it depends on the zodiac. An instant inside a tropical stretch is inside a sidereal one only about a third of the time. That is a share of hours, not of people; nothing here counts births. Whether a birth was in a void stretch needs the birth instant and a table like the one above, and neither this page nor the site gives a reading of the answer.

Advice for New Starts: Not Given Here

Western astrologers who use the void Moon attach advice to it, about what to begin or put off while it lasts. This page reports when the stretches fall and how long they run, and gives no advice to start, sign, travel or wait at any time because of one. The counts above cannot test such advice: they measure the sky, not what happens to anything begun under it.

What This Page Does Not Give

It gives no meaning for a void Moon, at birth or at any other moment, and no outcome for anything timed by one. It does not compute the orb-based horary version, and it prints no panchang time: the void stretch is a Western measure, and the sidereal figures are here only to show how much the zodiac changes the count. For the Moon’s stays in Vedic terms, the nakshatra stay page measures how long it holds each of the 27 nakshatras, the daily panchang gives each day’s tithi and nakshatra and the Moon’s rashi for New Delhi, and the retrograde shadow dates page treats another Western timing idea the same way, as geometry.

In Brief

• Definition: from the Moon’s last exact Ptolemaic aspect in a sign to its next sign entry, with or without Uranus, Neptune and Pluto
• How often: at the end of every sign stay, 160 or 161 times a year
• How long: about 8 hours at the median, 11.0 on average, from under an hour to nearly two days
• Share of time: about a fifth, 20.2% tropical and 19.3% sidereal
• Outer planets: change about 7% of stretches and under two points of time share
• Zodiac: only about a third of tropical void time is also sidereal void time
• No readings: no meaning and no advice for any stretch