What is an applying aspect?
The faster planet is still moving toward the exact angle, so the aspect is tightening rather than loosening. You tell which one you are looking at by the direction the gap is moving: closing is applying, widening is separating. In a birth chart an applying aspect is read as a theme that keeps developing rather than one already worked through; in a transit it means the exact day is still ahead of you. Most astrologers give it the greater weight of the two.
Where astrologers disagree
How much more an applying aspect counts is a convention rather than a measurement. A planet that turns retrograde before it reaches exactness never completes the aspect at all, which some astrologers read as a theme that never quite lands and others treat as no different from any other applying aspect.
In the reference library: Applying aspects: the closing angle, how it is told, and why it carries weight
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Where you see this in OrbHeaven
Draw your own chart and this definition stops being abstract: the same term, with your numbers in it. Every placement, house and aspect, with the engine, the house system and the exact universal time printed underneath. No account, no email address, and nothing you type is kept.
No account, no email address, and nothing you type is kept.
How the planets get on
Aspects, and the arithmetic that decides whether one counts.