Clocks Go Back Tonight: Born in the Repeated Hour? The Same Clock Time Can Give Two Rising Signs
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Clocks go back one hour tomorrow, Sunday October 25, 2026 in the UK and the European Union, and on Sunday November 1 in the United States and Canada. For one hour that night, every time on the clock happens twice.
For most people that is an extra hour of sleep. For a baby born in that hour, it is a problem for the birth chart: a birth certificate that says "01:30" can mean two moments an hour apart. We calculated what that does to the rising sign.
The same clock time, two rising signs
Rising sign (ascendant) at three clock times in the repeated hour, first time through (summer time) and second time through (standard time), calculated with the same engine behind our birth charts.
| City | Clock time | First time through | Second time through |
|---|---|---|---|
| London (Oct 25) | 01:30 | Leo 25° | Virgo 6° |
| Paris (Oct 25) | 02:30 | Leo 26° | Virgo 7° |
| New York (Nov 1) | 01:30 | Leo 28° | Virgo 9° |
| Chicago (Nov 1) | 01:30 | Leo 29° | Virgo 11° |
| Los Angeles (Nov 1) | 01:30 | Leo 26° | Virgo 9° |
(Paris repeats 02:00–03:00 local time; the others repeat 01:00–02:00.)
In every city the two readings of the same clock time are about 11 to 12.5 degrees apart. That is enough to change the sign.
How much of the hour is affected
Minute by minute through the repeated hour, we counted how often the two readings give a different rising sign:
| City | Minutes out of 60 with two different rising signs |
|---|---|
| London | 56 |
| Paris | 52 |
| Los Angeles | 48 |
| New York | 43 |
| Chicago | 35 |
In London, for all but the last few minutes of the hour, a clock time alone cannot tell you whether the rising sign is Leo or Virgo. The houses change with it.
Why the rising sign moves so fast
The rising sign is the part of the zodiac on the eastern horizon. As the Earth turns, all twelve signs rise in about a day, roughly one sign every two hours on average. An hour is about half a sign. The Sun, Moon and planets barely move in an hour (the Moon about half a degree), so the rest of the chart is almost unchanged; the rising sign and houses are what an ambiguous hour breaks.
If you were born in a repeated hour
Hospitals usually note whether a birth in that hour happened before or after the change, sometimes as "01:30 BST" or "01:30 GMT", or "EDT" and "EST" in the US. If your record shows the time-zone label, use it. If it doesn't, the hospital record or a parent's memory of "before or after the clocks changed" is the only way to settle it. Without that, an honest chart shows both possibilities.
What the numbers do and don't tell you
Where the horizon cuts the zodiac at a given moment is astronomy. What a Leo or Virgo rising means is astrology's interpretation, and these figures cannot prove or disprove it. They show only that the clock time on a certificate is not always enough to fix the moment.
How we calculated: ascendant from local sidereal time, latitude and the obliquity of the ecliptic (Meeus formulas in our public-domain chart engine), for each minute of the repeated hour; clock changes as legislated for 2026 (UK and EU: 02:00 BST/03:00 CEST back one hour on October 25; US: 02:00 back one hour on November 1). City centres only; a different town in the same time zone shifts the degrees slightly.
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