TMSA precision in Solar Return calculation

[Jim Eshelman]

I've mentioned this before and wanted to post on it pointedly: TMSA uses newer calculating methods than Solar Fire and is slightly more accurate for modern times and a lot more accurate for ancient times.

I thought I'd pay some attention to just how this accuracy impacted something I've looked at closely for several years: the exact place a solar return occurs. For years, Marion and I have travelled (nearby or farther away) for our birthdays to grab an optimized imprint for the SSR. The outcomes have been favorable (in the sense that we've had ultimately good, lucky years when the LA chart was harsh and not expected to be lucky or prospering).

One of the most important rules I've followed in this - which has seemed to confirm itself in practice - is that a planet nearly to the minute of an angle overwhelms everything else in the chart. You can feel the difference: Even with other (often less desirable) planets near angles, one planet precisely angular to nearly the minute spikes its importance so much that it dominates the entire year almost to the level of wholly overpowering the others.

The problem I now see is: During many of those years, the planet wasn't as close as I thought. I need to recalibrate my sensibilities of what "angular almost to the minute" means because, some of those years, it was farther than the 0°00' to 0°03' I thought it was. (It was still super-close; just not "to the minute" close as I'd thought.)

So... how close were they?

[Jim Eshelman]

This question got stirred by seeing some old Facebook posts from two years ago when I was trying to chart where we wanted to spend Marion's 2020 SSR. For LA, she was right on a Saturn line (that moved up the middle of all of California). There was a Uranus line striking across Utah and eastern Colorado, so - intersecting some other desirable stuff - we were looking at heading to Utah or Grand Junction, CO. Then Covid hit. Money was tighter and interstate travel was both more dangerous and restricted.

I was concerned about the LA SSR (especially during Covid) and was a bit at a loss what to do. Then I saw that Jupiter square Asc touched the California coast a little below Big Sur. If we could hit the exact spot that it crossed (within a mile or so), even though Saturn would still be within a degree and a half of an angle (quite strong!), maybe that Jupiter would overwhelm. I found the little town of Lucia, CA (a familiar spot on travelling the coast, though we'd never put a name to it) which seemed to be exactly where Jupiter crossed the coast. In our first Covid trip out, we loaded Kali in the car and headed up the coast toward Big Sur.

Solar Fire calculated the SSR as 4:44:31 PM with Jupiter one minute from the Nadir for were we stopped. (To be picky, it was 0°01'09" per SF.) But TMSA now tells me the time was 4:44:55 PM. Not a big difference? Well, it's only a big difference when you're trying to plan something to 0°00'.

This was close enough, though. The TMSA chart shows Asc 0°04' different and Jupiter 0°03' from Nadir. It was a quite fitting chart. The Jupiter was entirely fitting. Besides the "soft" interpretation of Jupiter on Nadir (the two of us wholly centered on our home, isolation, privacy, and finding the benefits and pleasure of that), there is the powerful concrete expression that Marion conceived an entirely new way to forward our wine business during the pandemic and, after years of trying, built a successful team, drove move tasting events (all online) that we'd ever done, and broke through to be named a senior director. It was one of the most successful years of her life.

So... OK, yeah, 0°03' does the job!

[Jim Eshelman]

For 2021, I thought I'd found a spot at a rest stop just north of Shasta where natal Jupiter squared Asc 0°00'. This one was a bit different, a bit wider since Ascendant shifted 0°09' when recalculating in TMSA. (There is also the difference that it's natal Jupiter, not transiting Jupiter - a bit more self-indulgent and at ease, less outward luck and success but tending to make one's own luck.)

This has been a fine enough year with some significant steps forward. It began, though, with a blow to her pride that took a bit of recovery time, then she hit the ground running again. Obviously, it was still a positive year with a 0°09' natal Jupiter angularity shining, but there wasn't the sense of it overwhelming everything else.

[Jim Eshelman]

The first year we travelled for birthdays was 2016. That year, it wasn't intentional - I had a better SSR setup in LA and it softened and changed by spending it camping outside Mount Zion National Park in Hurricane, Utah. (I didn't record the exact longitude and latitude, but Hurricane is small.) SF calculated the chart as 1:42:11 AM MDT; TMSA gives 1:42:10, agreeing to within a second of time. No real difference here. (Transiting Uranus 23' from MC was the hallmark of several interesting angular planets.)

For 2017 we went to Denver. I didn't get the precise coordinates of our hotel, but it was just south of central core of Denver. Again, the chart agreement was within about a second, but I was only using Denver as an approximation, not trying for the "get to the minute" accuracy. Transiting Jupiter was 16' from square MC, transiting Uranus 1°11' above Desc, natal Jupiter and Uranus within a degree and a half of MC, natal Neptune 17' from Asc. All close, strong, nothing to the minute.

By 2018 I saw where this was going and tried to get smarter about it. I picked Milwaukee, an unlikely-seeming place for a great holiday and yet one of our best trips anywhere. The SSR had some worrisome (mixed and worrisome) Moon aspects for wherever I was, so good angles were important. The SF vs. TMSA calculations were 15 seconds of time off. (I had coordinates of our room to the second of longitude and latitude.) The real chart from TMSA was even better than the planned chart from SF because natal Jupiter was 0°00' from Dsc (natal Uranus only 0°10' away, natal Mars 0°11' from Asc). Transiting Jupiter was 0°58' from MC (on natal Venus, widely). With so much happening, it's hard to lay this on a single planet, yet natal Jupiter being 0°00' from the horizon is an obvious standout. I had no orb problem that year and felt like it was a turning point of all sorts of good things starting to fall into place.

[Jim Eshelman]

With the 2019 SSR, we drove up to north Santa Barbara County for wine tasting, then planned to settle in a parking lot near Goleta, CA for the soon-after-sunset SSR. I'd found a parking lot of a school not far off the freeway that I thought was the optimum spot. When we got there, it didn't look like I'd imagined from the map, but, hey, here was a school, we're in the right town, there's the parking lot.

It turned out to be a different school, so not precisely what I'd planned, but nothing to really worry about. When I check TMSA for the exact location we sat, I find transiting Venus was 0°05' from Dsc.

There were several other close angularities and they all tied together by mundane aspects: Transiting Uranus rose opposite that Venus and two Mercuries near Dsc, all square Pluto at MC. But that Venus, 0°05' from the angle, is the champ and it was quite descriptive: This chart covered most of the first year of the pandemic when I sat working from home most of the year and discovered that my wife and my cat do indeed like having me around as much as I'd thought. It's nicely, quietly fitting.



My 2020 SSR was the spark of luck, though, a showing that the universe guides us. For my 2020 SSR (with multiple threatening Moon aspects - not what I wanted during the pandemic!), I was about ready to hunker down and take my lumps by staying at home. Then, at the last minute, we had a business need to be briefly in Las Vegas. That being the case, I quickly calculated that St. George, Utah had some serious advantages with natal planets angular. We left Vegas later than we had planned that night (transiting Mercury was crossing my Saturn, known for delays) and were racing down the freeway where from Nevada you loop briefly into the NW corner of Arizona before flinging up into Utah and toward St. George. But we were late. We clearly weren't going to make it. We decided to just take the adventure of the moment and, when my alarm went off five minutes before the SSR, to look for a place to pull over so I could stand around a few minutes and get a good GPS reading.

We pulled over at 36N52'16", 11W57'40". I thought we'd missed the desired mark for the angularities as close as I wanted them. It turned out, though - I now see through TMSA - that we hadn't missed it at all. Using precessed right ascensions:

120°35' - r Uranus
120°47' - SSR EP
120°48' - r Jupiter

Jupiter hit within a minute! All "by accident."

There was other stuff, of course, including two Mercuries within a degree of the angle (their midpoint 0°09' from Nadir). The half-minute difference in time between the SF and TMSA calculations wouldn't have made a LOT of difference, but it would have derailed this "to the minute" precision.


This year's Memphis SSR was going to be good no matter what (and it was a spectacular trip for both of us: Marion's SSR relocated to there pulled Sun and Jupiter, though wider than mine). We didn't get to-the-minute, but I didn't need it quite as much. When my SSR hit at 9:24:55 AM CDT, we were at 35N07'57", 90W03'29". The most angular planet was transiting Jupiter 0°25' from IC, with transiting Uranus 2°19' from Dsc. Nothing else was Class 1 angularity except my Mercury 2°27' from Asc, which made the Uranus transit to Mercury only 0°08' mundo. I suppose Jupiter didn't have to compete with much, didn't have to overwhelm, just had to shine it's 100% strength score. It's been a mostly good year so far - one rough patch with truly terrible transits, progressions, and directions that we came through with the technically true outcome of getting Covid, but it being far lighter than it could have been; some financial struggles, but coming out of them now, perhaps better off than before; and so on. In simple terms, it's going to shake out as a very good year,

[Jim Eshelman]

At present, I'm inclined to generalize as follows:

When the most angular planets have nothing to compete with - nothing else (at original location or the residence to which one will return) close enough to challenge them - then we have much more room and, for example, anything that shows as 100% on TMSA "wins."

Where there IS competition, though, what is the orb at which a planet is so close that it totally overwhelms everything else? I think 0°09' is too far, 0°03' is easily close enough, and 0°05' might be an upper ceiling.

[FlorencedeZ.]

This is very interesting Jim. I always travel for birthdays if possible and so far the closest angularities have manifested well within 0-4 minutes from angles. Last year I only needed to drive thirty minutes for a relocated SSR with natal Jupiter exact. It's great fun too.

[Jim Eshelman]

This is very interesting Jim. I always travel for birthdays if possible and so far the closest angularities have manifested well within 0-4 minutes from angles. Last year I only needed to drive thirty minutes for a relocated SSR with natal Jupiter exact. It's great fun too.

Hi, Flo. Yes, I agree with all of that .

I should have mentioned above this kind of hair-splitting presumes an exact birth time. My time and my wife's time seem accurate at least to the clock minute; and the round minute seems accurate to within a few seconds for both of us. Watching my own chart minutely, it long has felt that the time is probably a few seconds after 4:13 AM, certainly no later than 4:13:15 (and probably no later than 4:13:10), but I don't have a way to say that definitively.

In general, though, if the birth time is accurate to the minute, by definition its maximum error is 30 seconds, which means the angles can shift up to 7-8' or arc.