Mom doesn't remember what time I was born, she said it was early morning...how can I tell my ascendant sign now?

1) Hospital birth certificates usually have the time of birth. Contact the hospital where you were born and find out what the requirements are for obtaining a copy. They usually keep them for about 50 years.

2) The legal birth certificate may or may not have it. Contact whomever is in charge of records, e.g. Board of Health, Hall of Records. etc and request a copy of the long form.

Be prepared to pay.

there are softwares available on internet on which you enter date of birth, place of birth and enter random time of birth which qualifies to be called as early morning. Say 00:30am, 2:30am, 4:30am and 6:30am-so you will have 4 charts each having different rising sign. Go to an experienced astrologer with these charts or the astrologer may even generate these if you tell that you are not sure about birth time but family says its early morning. Showing him the 4 charts that you have. Based on each of those 4 charts the astrologer will predict events that have happened in your life. The chart that predicts most number of actually happened events in your life uptil now will give the mostly likely birth time interval for you. There are astrologers who have that intuition to predict based on your image and dont need you to tell them your birth time. Birth time can be manipulated for misuse. Say a girl is born at a time when her rising sign is the one that makes Mars go in her 12th house making her Manglik then her parents may report her birth time 2 hours later than her actual birth time so that Mars now goes to her 11th house which is better place to house mars. There are cases where girl was born with Moon in 1st part of Jyestha constellation of Scorpio but her parents reported the birth time earlier when Moon is in 4th part of Anuradha constellation of Scorpio so that they dont have to face the problem of Jyestha constellation fault(Jyestha Nakshatra Dosha). When matching a horoscope never blindly trust the time of birth, date of birth and place of birth given by the other party-get it verified by an experienced astrologer on if these 3 details are correct or manipulated. Also give a photo of the native whose chart is provided.

You could check your birth certificate.

Many governments have both a "short form" which doesn't always have the birth time listed on it, but also have a "long form" which does.

Another option is to check with the hospital where you were born. Some of them keep records, some don't.

Or ask all your relatives if they know. But understand that sometimes an error of even just 4 minutes can give you the wrong Rising Sign. So memory is usually flawed. And what people tend to remember is a rounded-off time that could be as much as 30 minutes off from the actual birthtime.

If you cannot find an accurate and precise birthtime, you cannot find your Ascendant, nor even the Rising Sign (the Ascendant is the actual degree of the Sign that was rising over the eastern horizon).

Fortunately, the Ascendant is not that important.

It is not your true personality, but only the style of behavior you put on as a "mask" to hide behind and feel safe, when you are NOT feeling comfortable in a social situation. And the more you relax into that situation, the more the styles of your Ascendant fade out.

In astrologer we focus first on the 10 "planets" (including Sun and Moon). Each planet represents a different need, and it is these needs that make us who and how we are.

And FIRST we consider the aspects any of these planets have with each other.

"Aspects" are certain distances around the 360-degree wheel of the zodiac, and when any two planets are at any of these distances from each other, these planets/needs interact within you.

The Signs only matter secondly.

The Signs show the general behavior style we use to try to meet the need of whatever planet is IN that Sign. And if the planet is badly aspected, we tend to express the negative behaviors associated with that sign. And well-aspected, the positive behaviors.

But the Ascendant is NOT a body in the sky . it is not a planet. So it is not nearly as significant as your 10 planets. And the most-significant thing about the planets is not their Signs but their aspects with each other.

You can do a far better reading without knowing the Signs BUT knowing the aspects, than you can knowing the Signs but not knowing the aspects.

Request from the government birth cert with birth time. Government keeps all the records

Your birth certificate should have the time you were born on it.

you could check to see if a newspaper will tell you if you can find one from the day you were born

Your birth certificate will have the exact time you were born. The doctor is required, by law, to mark the time.