If your Sun is in the 7th house, you were born in the last third of the daylight, and the house ends when the Sun sets. Under the house method most US apps use, that is about 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. by the Sun on the two days a year when day and night are the same length.
On the clock, the window moves a lot with the season. In New York on the shortest day, it runs from 2:56 to 4:27 p.m. That is a working weekday afternoon. On the longest day, it runs from 5:56 to 8:26 p.m. That is dinner time.
That shift matters, because US babies are not born at an even pace. Hospitals are busy in the afternoon and calmer at night. So the hospital clock lifts the Sun in the 7th house in winter and trims it in summer. This guide measures that effect with every US birth of 2024. It gives the clock times for your city, and it says what the old and new books make of a Sun that sits at the setting point.
The 7th house, in plain words
Your birth chart is a map of the sky at the minute you were born. Astrologers cut that map into twelve slices called houses. Each house covers one field of life.
The 7th house covers the person in front of you. Marriage lives here, and so do business partners, signed deals and lawsuits. William Lilly added the open enemy, the rival you can name. Our guide to the 7th house and its open enemy tells why the spouse and the rival share one room.
The Sun stands for the core of you: the self you grow into, and where you want to shine. Put it in the 7th house and the self grows up face to face. It finds out who it is through the one person across the table.
Now the sky part. The houses are fixed to the ground under your feet, not to the stars. The 1st house starts at the east edge of the sky, where the Sun comes up. The 10th house sits near the top. The 7th house starts at the west edge. Astrologers call that point the Descendant, which means the setting point.
Here is the detail most guides skip. The 7th house is the band of sky just above the west edge, not below it. The Sun passes through it on its way down, in the last hours before it sets. So a Sun in the 7th house is a late afternoon or early evening Sun, low in the west.
Two ways to draw the houses
There are two common ways to cut the sky, and they can give different answers for the Sun.
Whole sign houses are the oldest way. The sign rising in the east at your birth is your whole 1st house, the next sign is your 2nd, and so on. The Greek writers used this and nothing else.
Placidus houses cut the sky by time. The path of each planet from its high point down to the west edge is split into three equal parts of time. Most US sites and apps use this one.
For the Sun, Placidus gives a clean rule. The Sun is in the 7th house during the last third of the time between its high point and sunset. We give both systems below, and we say which one each number uses.
The last third of the daylight
Start with Sun time. At noon by the Sun, the Sun stands highest in your sky. On the two equinox days, sunset comes six hours later, at 6 p.m. by the Sun.
Split those six hours into thirds. The 9th house takes noon to 2 p.m. The 8th takes 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. The 7th takes 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. So on those two days, the Sun is in the 7th house from 4 p.m. to sunset by the Sun.
The rest of the year the window stretches and shrinks. In June the days are long, so each third is longer. The window runs from about 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. by the Sun. In December the days are short. It shrinks to about 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. by the Sun.
One small point about the end of the window. The house ends when the center of the Sun meets the west edge. The sunset time in your weather app comes a few minutes later. That time counts the moment the top rim of the Sun drops out of sight, and it adds the bending of light by the air. In New York the gap is four to five minutes all year.
Sun time is not clock time
Your birth record shows clock time, not Sun time. Two things pull them apart.
First, your time zone is wide. The clock is the same across the whole zone, but the Sun sets later the farther west you live. Second, daylight saving time moves the clock one hour ahead from March to November. So a 5 p.m. Sun in July reads close to 6 p.m. on the wall.
Here is the Placidus window for the Sun in the 7th house in three big US cities, in local clock time. We found each start and end with the Swiss Ephemeris, the same engine many chart apps use. We checked the house of the Sun every thirty seconds.
| Date in 2026 | New York | Chicago | Los Angeles. |
|---|---|---|---|
| February 1 | 3:29 to 5:09 p.m. EST | 3:22 to 5:01 p.m. CST | 3:35 to 5:19 p.m. PST. |
| March 20, equinox | 5:04 to 7:04 p.m. EDT | 4:58 to 6:58 p.m. CDT | 5:01 to 7:01 p.m. PDT. |
| June 21, longest day | 5:56 to 8:26 p.m. EDT | 5:53 to 8:24 p.m. CDT | 5:40 to 8:03 p.m. PDT. |
| August 1 | 5:45 to 8:07 p.m. EDT | 5:42 to 8:04 p.m. CDT | 5:33 to 7:49 p.m. PDT. |
| September 22, equinox | 4:49 to 6:49 p.m. EDT | 4:43 to 6:43 p.m. CDT | 4:46 to 6:45 p.m. PDT. |
| November 15 | 2:56 to 4:33 p.m. EST | 2:48 to 4:25 p.m. CST | 3:02 to 4:45 p.m. PST. |
| December 21, shortest day | 2:56 to 4:27 p.m. EST | 2:48 to 4:17 p.m. CST | 3:06 to 4:43 p.m. PST. |
EST, CST and PST are winter clock time. EDT, CDT and PDT are summer clock time. At the two equinoxes, all three cities match the 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Sun rule, once you undo the time zone and the summer shift.
Now look at the ends of the year. In New York the June window opens at the hour the December window has already closed. The two windows do not overlap at all. Since 2007, other years move these times by a minute or two, no more. Before 2007, summer time started in April and ended in late October, so check the clock rule for your birth year.
The odds at each clock hour
We then asked a plain question. Of all US babies born in a given clock hour, how many have the Sun in the 7th house under Placidus? We used every third day from 1940 to 2030, with a check every two minutes.
| Clock hour of birth | Share with the Sun in the 7th house. |
|---|---|
| Before 2 p.m. | Almost none. |
| 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. | 0.7 percent of births. |
| 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. | 16.3 percent of births. |
| 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. | 37.6 percent of births. |
| 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. | 44.8 percent of births. |
| 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. | 53.7 percent of births. |
| 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. | 37.4 percent of births. |
| 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. | 10.1 percent of births. |
| 9 p.m. or later | Almost none. |
Over the whole year, the 6 p.m. hour has the best odds, and more than 99.9 percent of US cases fall between 2 p.m. and 9 p.m. on the clock. But the year hides two very different seasons. In December, a baby born in the 4 p.m. hour has the Sun in the 7th house 72 percent of the time, and a baby born at 6 p.m. almost never does. In June, the 7 p.m. hour gives 97 percent, and the 4 p.m. hour gives almost nothing.
How the hospital clock bends the seasons
If babies were born at the same rate every minute of the day, the Sun would sit in each house one time in twelve. That is 8.33 percent. Our even clock count gave 8.36 percent under Placidus and 8.32 percent under whole sign houses.
But babies do not come at an even pace. The CDC, the US public health agency, puts every birth record into one public file each year. The 2024 file holds 3,638,436 births. Only 666 of them lack a time of birth. The 3 p.m., 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. hours each hold about 4.7 percent of births, against 4.2 percent on an even clock. The 7 p.m. hour holds only 3.7 percent.
So we weighted our count by the real 2024 birth hours, with the month and the day of the week kept apart.
| Birth hours used | Placidus houses | Whole sign houses. |
|---|---|---|
| Even clock | 8.36 percent | 8.32 percent. |
| Real US hours, 2024 | 8.79 percent | 8.38 percent. |
Over the whole year, the real hours raise the Sun in the 7th house by about 5 percent. That is a small rise. Our guide to the Sun in the 8th house found a rise of 14 percent, to 9.53 percent. The yearly figure hides the real story, which sits in the months.
December gains, June loses
The table gives the share of births with the Sun in the 7th house for each month of birth, under Placidus.
| Month of birth | Even clock | Real US hours, 2024. |
|---|---|---|
| Born in January | 6.8 percent | 7.6 percent. |
| Born in February | 7.4 percent | 8.3 percent. |
| Born in March | 8.2 percent | 9.1 percent. |
| Born in April | 9.1 percent | 9.4 percent. |
| Born in May | 9.8 percent | 9.5 percent. |
| Born in June | 10.1 percent | 9.8 percent. |
| Born in July | 9.9 percent | 9.6 percent. |
| Born in August | 9.3 percent | 9.3 percent. |
| Born in September | 8.5 percent | 9.0 percent. |
| Born in October | 7.7 percent | 8.5 percent. |
| Born in November | 6.9 percent | 7.8 percent. |
| Born in December | 6.5 percent | 7.4 percent. |
Read the even clock column first. It only tracks the length of the day. A long June day gives the 7th house a long window, so June gets 10.1 percent. A short December day gives it a short one, so December gets 6.5 percent. June wins by a factor of 1.55.
Now read the real hours column. In December the short window lands on busy afternoon hours, and the share climbs by 13 percent, to 7.4 percent. In June the long window runs into the calmer evening, and the share drops by about 4 percent, to 9.8 percent. May and July drop too. August stays level.
So the hospital clock pulls the seasons closer. With real hours, June beats December by a factor of 1.32, not 1.55. The 8th and 11th house guides saw real hours raise the share in every month of the year. For the 7th house, the summer months go the other way.
Whole sign houses tell a different story about the season. Under that system, the 7th house lasts as long as the sign across from your Sun takes to rise, and some signs rise much faster than others. A September Sun sits in Virgo, so it needs Pisces rising, one of the fastest signs. With real hours, only 5.0 percent of September births have the Sun in the whole sign 7th house, against 9.0 percent under Placidus. For February births it is the reverse: 11.1 percent under whole sign houses and 8.3 percent under Placidus. So the two systems do not even agree on the best month.
Weekdays and weekends
Hospitals book far fewer births on the weekend. In 2024, 21 percent of births fell on a Saturday or a Sunday, where an even week would give 29 percent. The day of the week shows up in the count.
| Day of birth | Sun in the 7th house, Placidus, real hours. |
|---|---|
| Monday | 9.26 percent. |
| Tuesday | 8.90 percent. |
| Wednesday | 8.96 percent. |
| Thursday | 9.00 percent. |
| Friday | 8.54 percent. |
| Saturday | 8.23 percent. |
| Sunday | 8.29 percent. |
A weekday birth has the Sun in the 7th house 8.93 percent of the time. A weekend birth has it 8.26 percent of the time. Monday leads, and Friday sits close to the weekend.
The season and the weekday add up. A December weekday birth has the Sun in the 7th house 7.57 percent of the time, and a December weekend birth 6.78 percent. That is a gap of about 12 percent. In June the gap is only 4 percent: 9.85 percent on weekdays and 9.49 percent on weekends. The weekend costs the most when the window falls in office hours.
Which kind of birth lands here
The CDC file says how each baby was born. For a C-section, it also says if labor had started first. A C-section with no labor first is a birth planned ahead. So we ran the count for each kind of birth.
| Kind of birth in 2024 | Share of all births | Sun in the 7th house, Placidus. |
|---|---|---|
| C-section with no labor first | 23 percent of births | 6.7 percent of these births. |
| C-section after labor had started | 9 percent of births | 9.6 percent of these births. |
| Vaginal birth, labor not induced | 40 percent of births | 8.6 percent of these births. |
| Labor induced with drugs, any delivery | 34 percent of births | 10.4 percent of these births. |
Planned C-sections are the one group below the even clock rate. Hospitals book them from 8 a.m., which fills the morning houses. Our guide to the Sun in the 11th house found 17.9 percent of them there. By late afternoon the surgery list is done.
Induced births lead. Induced means labor was started on purpose with drugs. The drip goes in during the day, and in 2024 induced births peaked in the 5 p.m. hour. From March to October, that hour sits inside the 7th house window.
The season shows up here too. For planned C-sections, the share barely moves through the year. It sits between 6.4 and 7.2 percent in every month, and June is no higher than January. A booked birth follows the surgery list, not the length of the day.
Your Sun sign shifts the odds
Since the window grows in summer, the Sun sign shifts the odds too. The even clock column holds for any hour pattern of the past. The real hours column is for a baby born under the 2024 pattern.
| Sun sign | Even clock | Real US hours, 2024. |
|---|---|---|
| Aries | 8.8 percent | 9.4 percent. |
| Taurus | 9.5 percent | 9.5 percent. |
| Gemini | 10.1 percent | 9.7 percent. |
| Cancer | 10.1 percent | 9.7 percent. |
| Leo | 9.5 percent | 9.4 percent. |
| Virgo | 8.8 percent | 9.1 percent. |
| Libra | 7.9 percent | 8.7 percent. |
| Scorpio | 7.1 percent | 8.0 percent. |
| Sagittarius | 6.6 percent | 7.4 percent. |
| Capricorn | 6.6 percent | 7.5 percent. |
| Aquarius | 7.1 percent | 8.1 percent. |
| Pisces | 7.9 percent | 8.8 percent. |
The even clock column is the same as the one in our 8th house guide, sign for sign. Under Placidus, each of the three houses between the high point and sunset gets the same share of the daylight. Real hours are what split them.
With real hours, the Gemini and Cancer suns lose a little and the winter suns gain a lot. A Gemini Sun is about 1.3 times as likely as a Sagittarius Sun to sit in the 7th house, not 1.5 times.
There is an irony here. The tradition pairs the 7th house with Libra, the 7th sign. Libra is where the Sun is in its fall, its weakest sign in the old scheme. You can read about that in our guide to the Libra sign and the Sun’s fall. A Libra Sun lands in the 7th house 8.7 percent of the time with real hours, close to the average.
What the old books say about the Sun here
The Greek writers gave each planet a house where it was glad to be. They called it the planet’s joy. The Sun’s joy is the 9th house, the room of God, just past the top of the sky. Chris Brennan sets out this scheme in his book Hellenistic Astrology, from 2017.
So a Sun in the 7th house has passed its joy by two rooms. It stands at the setting point, which the Greeks called the Dysis. They read the four angles of the chart as the strong places, and the Descendant is one of them. Some of them read the setting angle as the later part of life.
Ptolemy, in the Tetrabiblos from the 2nd century, lists five places he trusts when he judges the length of life. The setting angle is one of them, next to the rising point, the top of the sky, the 11th and the 9th. For marriage, he reads a woman’s chart from the Sun. So in the old books, a Sun in the 7th house is a solar body standing in the house of the spouse.
Vettius Valens, in his Anthologies, files marriage and the wife under the setting place. William Lilly, in Christian Astrology from 1647, keeps score with points. He gives four points to a planet in the 7th house. Only the 1st and the 10th score more, with five. For Lilly, a Sun in the 7th is a strong seat in the chart, weaker only than the two top angles.
What modern writers add
The modern reading turned the 7th house into a mirror. Liz Greene draws on Carl Jung and the idea of projection. We hand the traits we will not own in ourselves to other people, then meet them there. A Sun in the 7th house hands over the brightest trait of all: the sense of who you are.
Robert Hand says the 7th house describes the person you keep choosing and the fight you keep having. Stephen Arroyo reads the house of the Sun as the field of life where a person wants to feel most alive. Put that field in the 7th and the self comes alive in a pair. Demetra George, who spent years bringing the Greek texts back, reads the houses first as real topics: the actual spouse, the actual contract.
Here is how those readings show up in a life. We give them as the tradition gives them, not as a forecast.
- The self is built in a pair. Many modern authors see these natives come into their own through a marriage, a partner in business or a strong rival.
- The light goes to the other side of the table. The Sun in the 7th house can make a partner shine first. The task is to claim some of that light back.
- Deals are home ground. Contracts, talks and agreements sit in this house. The Sun there likes the moment when two sides shake hands.
- The rival counts too. Lilly’s open enemy lives in the same room. A Sun here can grow as much through a fair fight as through a quiet marriage.
Other planets in the same room change the tone. Our guide to Mars in the 7th house shows that Mars about to set is a placement with its own clock.
Mercury stays within 28 degrees of the Sun, and our guide to Mercury in the 7th house shows that the hospital clock favors the morning star there.
Is your Sun in the 7th house? Check these three things
First, you need a birth time you can trust. Look for the time on your long form birth record, not a family memory. A US birth outside the 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. clock range almost never has the Sun in the 7th house under Placidus.
Second, know which house system your app uses. The two systems can give different answers for the same birth. On June 21, 2026, in New York, the Placidus window is 5:56 to 8:26 p.m. EDT. The whole sign window that day is 8:23 to 10:17 p.m. EDT. Sunset in New York that day comes at 8:31 p.m. So under whole sign houses, a baby born at 9 p.m. has the Sun in the 7th house after it has set. Under Placidus that can never happen.
Third, allow for error near the edges. A time off by an hour can move the Sun one room. Early in the window it slides back up into the 8th house. Once the Sun has set, it drops below the west edge into the 6th house, which we cover in our guide to Sun in the sixth house. In December that switch comes before 4:30 p.m. on the clock.
How we counted
We want you to be able to check this, so here is the full method. It is the same setup as our 8th and 11th house guides, so the pages can be read side by side.
Places: every US county, placed at its 2020 center of people from the Census Bureau and weighted by its head count. We grouped the counties into 303 cells, each with its own time zone. Puerto Rico is left out, as it is in the CDC file.
Dates: every day from January 1, 1940 to December 31, 2030. We turned each clock time into world time with the official time zone rules, war time and summer time included.
Birth hours: the CDC natality file for 2024, split by month, day of the week and minute of birth. For the kinds of birth, we used three fields of the same file: the way the baby was born, if labor was induced, and, for a C-section, if labor was tried first. We used the 2024 pattern for every year. Births in the 1970s had far fewer planned births, so for older readers the true share sits between the even clock value and the 2024 value.
Route one: an exact sum. For the Sun, Placidus has a simple rule. The Sun is in the 7th house when it has used between two thirds and all of its time from the high point to the west edge. We solved for the start and end of that window each day, in each place. Then we added up the births that fall inside it. This gave 8.79 percent, and every figure by month, weekday, kind of birth and sign.
Route two: a regular grid every third day and every two minutes, with our own formulas for the Sun and the rising degree. It gave 8.79 percent under Placidus, and 8.38 percent under whole sign houses. The clock hour table comes from this grid.
Route three: 1.2 million charts drawn at random with a fixed seed, each one built with the Swiss Ephemeris. It gave 8.76 percent, give or take 0.03, and 8.37 percent under whole sign houses. The three routes agree. Our 8th house guide drew its own random charts and got 8.8 percent for the 7th house, the same figure once rounded.
Questions people ask
How common is the Sun in the 7th house?
On an even clock, one chart in twelve, or 8.36 percent under Placidus. With real US birth hours from 2024, it rises to 8.79 percent under Placidus and 8.38 percent under whole sign houses. With real hours, winter births gain the most and summer births lose a little.
What time of day gives the Sun in the 7th house?
Under Placidus, the last third of the time between noon and sunset by the Sun. That is 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. by the Sun at the equinox. In New York it runs from 2:56 to 4:27 p.m. EST on the shortest day, and from 5:56 to 8:26 p.m. EDT on the longest day.
Does being born near sunset put the Sun in the 7th house?
Under Placidus, yes, if the birth came in the hours just before sunset. The house ends a few minutes before the sunset time in your weather app. A birth after sunset puts the Sun in the 6th house under Placidus. Under whole sign houses, the Sun can still be in the 7th after dark.
Are winter babies more likely to have the Sun in the 7th house?
No. June births still lead, at 9.8 percent with real US hours, against 7.4 percent in December. But the hospital clock narrows the gap. It lifts December by 13 percent and trims June by about 4 percent, because the winter window falls in busy afternoon hours.
Is the Sun in the 7th house a good placement?
In the old score books, yes. William Lilly gives a planet in the 7th house four points, one short of the best seats. Ptolemy counts the setting angle among his five trusted places. Modern writers read it as a self built through partners, deals and rivals.
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