One birth time

What a birth time adds

Three things need the hour. The rising sign describes how someone enters a room. The time also locates each planet within life. On some dates, it determines the Moon sign because the Moon changes during the day.

Everything else holds without it. The Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars and the slower planets move little enough in a day that a date is sufficient. In Chinese BaZi, the year, month and day pillars hold, and only the hour pillar is left out.

Reading an uneven pair

When one person has a time and the other does not, the reading should show that difference. The timed chart includes how someone comes across and where each planet acts. The untimed chart includes known signs. Its Moon appears only when it stayed in one sign all day.

The two charts can still be compared through Venus and the Moon, Mars and Saturn, or both Mercuries. What stays unknown is where those contacts land in the untimed person's life.

What Aster does about it

Unknowns are shown as unknown, not hidden and not guessed. The reading says what a birth time would add, and the other person can add it themselves from their side. That is the honest version, and it is also the one that gets better over time.