Solunars by Aldebaran Sidereal Academy

I took a quick look and couldn't find anything in this subforum about future handling of transits and such, so here are my thoughts. (I'm currently stuck in a really long meeting that doesn't need much input, and I want to be productive with something.) As ever, I'm interested in what others have in mind.

Configuration
I don't have complete thoughts on this yet, but I'm imagining that users will want to include or not include entire techniques (such as transits to novien points), they will want to include or not include some aspects (like octiles), and they will want to include or not include a set of points per technique (excluding secondary progressed non-luminary points, etc). I'm imagining something much less configurable than Solar Fire, so that we can potentially fit all of it onto a single page (except for a "select valid planets" screen per technique, sort of like how SF does it).

There are 3 separate use cases for these non-chart techniques that I can think of:

Case 1: seeing what applies at a given moment.
This could eventually fall into the "burst of all predictive techniques" bucket.
The output would simply be a pile of factors and their orbs: Something like that.

Case 2: transit calendar.
This is a major personal wishlist item, and something I and others use other software for quite regularly.
This would just show, day by day for a month (for midnight, or maybe even noon), what's active and what their orbs are. I'm imagining this in an ASCII calendar-like table or possibly some CSV format for use in Excel/other spreadsheet.

I hope this formatting gets at least kind of preserved. Case 3: Enter/exact/exit reports like Solar Fire.
This is the one I least want to do. I just think it's gonna be a massive PITA. The Swiss Ephemeris doesn't have any functions to find the exact crossing of a body to another point due to this being difficult; I have guesses about how Solar Fire can do this so quickly, but the problem is still what it is.

Techniques
Transits to natal
Transits to local natal (angles)
Transits to SSR
Transits to secondary progressed natal
Transits to SQ
Transits to PSSR (?)

Secondary progressed to natal
Secondary progressed to local natal (angles) (?)
Secondary progressed to secondary progressed
SQ to natal
SQ to SQ
PSSR to natal
PSSR to PSSR

Solar arc directions to natal

SNQ to natal
SNQ to secondary progressions
Local SNQ to natal
Local SNQ to secondary progressions
SNQ to transits
Local SNQ to transits
SQ to natal
SQ to SSR
SQ to SQ
SQ to transits
(Maybe local SQ to all of these?)

Planetary periods (Dasa/Bhukti)

This is so many topics at once - but let's see what we can do with it (without getting too confused).

Yes, there isn't another main thread because MikeN had some ideas for a transit calendar that he never itemized and I was busy trying not to look at any predictive techniques at all (besides the current SSR/SLR options) until 1.0 was solidly, cleanly out - and then start envisioning the next, long-term extension. - But, hey, brainstorming can be fun.

Yes, depending on the technique, there are at least two kinds of things desired - static representations and reports giving changing details across a timeline.

Mike V wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2024 11:01 am Configuration
I don't have complete thoughts on this yet, but I'm imagining that users will want to include or not include entire techniques (such as transits to novien points), they will want to include or not include some aspects (like octiles), and they will want to include or not include a set of points per technique (excluding secondary progressed non-luminary points, etc). I'm imagining something much less configurable than Solar Fire, so that we can potentially fit all of it onto a single page (except for a "select valid planets" screen per technique, sort of like how SF does it).

Probably it doesn't need to be said: Everything doesn't have to be done at once. Getting a solid functioning core set of tools can always be expanded to more peripheral things. For example, I wouldn't have even thought of enabling transits to Novien points and, in any case, I think those fall in "when everything else is working fine: sure, add that option too." (I'm not clear yet whether Novien positions will be saved or calculated on the fly each time the natal is calculated, and many other things about Novien-related infrastructure.)

But broadly: Yes, aspect choice with orbs on each (to include all aspects currently in the aspect pool for charts: co/op/sq, oc, tr/sx, inc. No need for a separate mundane column (irrelevant concept) unless you combine this table with other possible aspect tables like dynamic parans.

Yes, point selection (core points presumed, with option for additional points in whatever form this settle in for primary charts).

You indirectly point to a complexity that needs to be thought through: Thinking of two data sets (e.g., transits and natals) is simple enough, but these might be more complicated with several layers of things atop each other. This is most obvious in the commonplace transits - progressions - natal set. Which of these do you want? Do you want the same planets in each one (surely not - a separate user-modifiable planet list should be available for each layer - one might want only outer planet transits - one would nearly always want to exclude transiting Moon but might sometime want to have it, or have it ONLY - etc.). One planet list for progressions/directions (don't need a separate list for each kind) and one can have different custom options if you want these to differ. Enabling by a check box whether transits and/or prog/dir and/or natals are included in the output. Probably only a total of these three columns for planet selections.

There are 3 separate use cases for these non-chart techniques that I can think of:

Case 1: seeing what applies at a given moment.
This could eventually fall into the "burst of all predictive techniques" bucket.
The output would simply be a pile of factors and their orbs:

No no no. The "burst" idea was intended to be chart wheels of numerous techniques, not lists of aspects except that the aspects between the wheels would be in the aspectarian. Things like, "calculate these 7 or 10 specific prediction charts for a specific natal and a specific event time/place."

This goes to my first point above: More than anything, we need static representations, e.g., transits and natal on a natal wheel etc. This generalizes to a particular multi-use concept MikeN had that a significant development threshold was being able to make a biwheel out of any two calculated charts. One could, of course, simply have progressions or transits come up this way, or one could simply have the ability to calculate a natal, calculate a progressed chart or event chart, and display them in a consolidated wheel. (Or a triwheel.) I see value in either approach (both approaches) of anticipating this display when asking for a chart (i.e., are you ever going to calculate a progressed chart without wanting the natals involved) and the approach of consolidating them. It seems, though, that a completely flexible "make a biwheel or a triwheel from any combination of charts already calculated, using the display options currently available for solunars" to be the front-end piece that makes the others easy.

I know that for research purposes, wheels capturing a specific technique for one moment in time are way more valuable than any number of lists, though for personal or client work a list of some kinds of things is the way to go - so, we need both, of course.

Ah, I see now. You were distinguishing lists from calendar and not thinking of wheels (which to me is the main must do feature). I hadn't thought of a calendar that looked like a calendar; therefore, by "calendar" I was expecting a list LOL.

I may not have everyone else's sensibilities on the list/calendar options. With Solar Fire, I run nearly a dozen separate calculations items each month for myself and build an Excel spreadsheet. No other way to get all the exact things I want in one place, properly labelled, given visual weight, etc. I'm sure I'll never use a "try to fit it all into one list or picture? feature in TM other than to test that it's working right, so I might not be as good at brainstorming this.

Case 2: transit calendar.
This would just show, day by day for a month (for midnight, or maybe even noon), what's active and what their orbs are. I'm imagining this in an ASCII calendar-like table or possibly some CSV format for use in Excel/other spreadsheet.

Yes, .csv export makes sense and allows lots of flexibility (like calculating six of them, pasting them into Excel and resorting and formatting). I certainly have no objection to a calendar displayed format.

Case 3: Enter/exact/exit reports like Solar Fire.
This is the one I least want to do. I just think it's gonna be a massive PITA. The Swiss Ephemeris doesn't have any functions to find the exact crossing of a body to another point due to this being difficult; I have guesses about how Solar Fire can do this so quickly, but the problem is still what it is.

Wait... really? I thought MikeN explicitly said SE had this. (Am I remembering wrong?)

I'm less concerned about enter/leave timing, though that would be useful (and it's a variation of the same problem); but, after the ability to put any two charts into a displayed biwheel, the most basic functioning seems to be a chronological list of the times each selected planet aspects each selected natal factor. Does this really all have to be an iterative nightmare? (Isn't this basic to your calendar idea? I thought you wanted a calendar of exactly this information.)

SF must use iteration, come to think of it, because the time for "calculate a solar return" and "calculate transiting Sun conjunct natal Sun" can be slightly different.

The ability to do this - as a reusable function - is basic to things like kinetic returns (two bodies in motion crossing). I wasn't going to push for quotidian reports until version 3 or so - or the more complicated transiting parans for which there is high demand - but they all require this basic function.

I'll circle back to the other points, because I have more questions about those. In the meantime:

Jim Eshelman wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2024 11:19 am

Case 3: Enter/exact/exit reports like Solar Fire.
This is the one I least want to do. I just think it's gonna be a massive PITA. The Swiss Ephemeris doesn't have any functions to find the exact crossing of a body to another point due to this being difficult; I have guesses about how Solar Fire can do this so quickly, but the problem is still what it is.

Wait... really? I thought MikeN explicitly said SE had this. (Am I remembering wrong?)

SE has this only for Sun and Moon crossings to a given point. From their documentation (removing low-level data type stuff):

Functions to find crossings of planets over positions

These functions find the crossing of the Sun over a given ecliptic position:
swe_solcross()...
swe_solcross_ut()...

These functions find the crossing of the Moon over a given ecliptic position:
swe_mooncross()...
swe_mooncross_ut()...

These functions find the crossing of the Moon over its true node, i.e. crossing through the ecliptic.
swe_mooncross_node()...
swe_mooncross_node_ut()...

There are currently no functions for geocentric crossings of other planets. Their movement is more complex because they can become stationary and retrograde and make multiple crossings in the short period of time. (Emphasis added)

...but, after the ability to put any two charts into a displayed biwheel, the most basic functioning seems to be a chronological list of the times each selected planet aspects each selected natal factor. Does this really all have to be an iterative nightmare?

This is the core difficulty, because the answer is essentially, yes. I would need to write interpolation logic to pinpoint the time when X body crosses Y point.
I did this once upon a time for Sun and Moon in my software, because solcross and mooncross didn't exist in the SE yet. However...

The ability to do this - as a reusable function - is basic to things like kinetic returns (two bodies in motion crossing).

The reason I was able to write that relatively simply, and the reason doing kinetics wouldn't be so crazy, is that Sun and Moon don't go retrograde. The fact that the other bodies do makes this an order of magnitude harder.
With the luminaries, the logic can be quite straightforward: is the transiting body too far? Go earlier in time; is it not far enough? Go forward in time.
But with the other bodies, it's not that simple. For example, let's take a case where Pluto is past some point, and is about to go retrograde, barely touch it, and then continue direct. Figuring out that we are in this situation at all - and that a non-retrograde body that's past a point will have a contact point in the future - is hard.

Yes. Definitely hard. I was wondering if there were standard approaches in the Python community (or other programming communities). Surely someone has come up with a good approach and made it public.

Am I remembering correctly that SE has a function for identifying the time of a station? If so, that gives a good endpoint filter. That would make this relatively easy. (Relatively!) The basic logic is lining itself up in my head IF we have such an endpoint.

Unfortunately, no. From the docs:

30. What is missing ?
There are some important limits in regard to what you can expect from an ephemeris module. We do not tell you:

· how to draw a chart;
· which glyphs to use;
· when a planet is stationary;
· how to compute universal time from local time, i.e. what timezone a place is located in;
· how to compute progressions, solar returns, composite charts, transit times and a lot more;
· what the different calendars (Julian, Gregorian ...) mean and when they apply.

I suspect it's related to the same difficulty.

Let me think about that.

This also changes thr difficulty of determining when a planet is stationary. Thst might require a different standard than occurring with 36 hours of the time of a station. Maybe something like less than 20% of the absolute value of avarage daily motion (which has some possible problems with Pluto in particular).

First tgought: Other than Moon, linear interpolation at one-day intervals is always sufficient to get a planet position to much better than nearest minute. Provide a test that ejects a sought transit as not existing if the test fails. It may be as simple as: If an exact hit isn't found in five iterations, skip it.

That seems workable. In any case, we know the problem is solvable (just not exactly how our previous leading example has done it).

Anyway... let me dig into some of your other responses.

Jim Eshelman wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2024 11:19 amProbably it doesn't need to be said: Everything doesn't have to be done at once.

I will never discourage anyone from reassuring me that not having perfection immediately is okay.

You indirectly point to a complexity that needs to be thought through: Thinking of two data sets (e.g., transits and natals) is simple enough, but these might be more complicated with several layers of things atop each other. [...] Probably only a total of these three columns for planet selections.

Yes, this is true. It'll be a decent amount to configure no matter how we slice it.

Ah, I see now. You were distinguishing lists from calendar and not thinking of wheels (which to me is the main must do feature). I hadn't thought of a calendar that looked like a calendar; therefore, by "calendar" I was expecting a list LOL.

Yeah, I was not thinking of wheels at all, since aside from return charts (and natals), I never look at anything using them. I really like calendars per se because I just glance across the week without any extra configuration. iPhemeris can do transits to natal, and separately, transits to SSR, but I have to switch the radix chart for that, and it doesn't do up-to-date progressions or anything, and I don't trust its solunar return algorithm enough to trust timing on transits to SSR angles, which can differ by a degree or two from Solar Fire... so it's merely a stopgap for me.

(Regarding charts: I do quotidians as "synastry grids" between some transiting chart and some other chart, and look for conjunctions/squares to angles.) Almost everything that I do with transits and progressions ends up as a list, so I was imagining exactly that: "for an exact moment, give me not only every chart I specify, but also the exact orbs of all of the current transit-type things." I was imagining it would just be 1 more text file that opens (and/or gets saved, whichever) when the calculation is done.

I may not have everyone else's sensibilities on the list/calendar options. With Solar Fire, I run nearly a dozen separate calculations items each month for myself and build an Excel spreadsheet. No other way to get all the exact things I want in one place, properly labelled, given visual weight, etc. I'm sure I'll never use a "try to fit it all into one list or picture? feature in TM other than to test that it's working right, so I might not be as good at brainstorming this.

I'm curious, is there anything you can think of that would lead to a useful result for you from TM, so you don't have to run all of those separate calculations?

I will think about that. Probably I should post my procedure.

As a contrast, here is one version of calendar - one Solar Fire generates. It doesn't include everything e.g. you can't have transits to natal and transits to SSR on the same page. This one has transits to natal (specifically my local natal) and transit-transit aspects (plus progressed and directed aspects when they're exact) and related handy stuff like Moon signs, ingresses, lunar phase, other sign ingresses. FWIW.

Jim Eshelman wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2024 8:24 pm

Mike V wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2024 8:20 pm I'm curious, is there anything you can think of that would lead to a useful result for you from TM, so you don't have to run all of those separate calculations?

I will think about that. Probably I should post my procedure.

Today is the day to do this for August, so I thought I'd post my procedure. This has changed over time. I want to emphasize that I would not bother to look at some of this stuff (like transits to Novien positions) for anyone else at all, but watching it for myself helps me assess the legitimacy and relative value of them. (Conclusion: Valid at least to luminaries which confirms the system's structure, but of very small usefulness.)

1. Transits to all natal points plus progressed Sun + Moon [Sun outward i.e. no Moon transits; 8th harmonic - the standard unless stated otherwise]
2. Transits to SSR [Sun outward; 8th harmonic]
3. Repeat for nativity local angles and, if SSR did not occur at home, SSR local angles [Note: Transits to relocated SSR angles have proven worthless for years. I keep watching them just because it's such a controversial conclusion.]
4. Progressed to natal and progressed positions [excluding progressed i.e. quotidian angles: Specialized progressed aspect list which includes 0 45 60 90 120 135 180. Add sign ingresses, house ingresses, and stations.]
5. Repeat progressions to grab any to local angles.
6. Solar Arc directions to natal [8th harmonic]
7. Repeat Solar Arcs to catch local angle involvement
8. SSR progressions by SQ and PSSR to SSR, progressed SSR, and natal positions [4th harmonic; include sign changes and stations]
9. Transits to SQ and PSSR Moons [8th harmonic, Sun outward]
10. Transits to Novien Moon [4th harmonic, Sun out]
11. Transits to Novien Sun [4th harmonic, Sun out]
12. Convert (with a global find-and-replace) format of date and time columns to match what Excel wants. Sort by date and time (unfortunately ignoring time zone - it's close enough). Strip out octiles to EP-a, relabel some things, and do significant font formatting to visually show priorities

Thanks for posting this; this is really helpful for me. Do you run reports including entering/leaving orb, or only exact hits?

Mike V wrote: Sat Jul 27, 2024 10:16 am Do you run reports including entering/leaving orb, or only exact hits?

Only exact hits. That's what uniquely distinguishes each day. - I then use formatting to make some (slower) aspects take up more psychological space when I look at it (such as today's transiting Uranus conjunct local MC and Jupiter to natal Uranus).

When doing the calculations, I do usually look at enter/leave for progressions and directions just to keep that data current in my head, but I don't include it in the report for myself.

I just finished doing August. It had nothing but transits (no progressions etc. ripening) so, for an example, I'll post a copy of the July and August spreadsheets.

Sample Monthly Personal Report (Excel):
https://1drv.ms/x/s!Ansnmu2xbktapb5Xw2H ... Q?e=3jZy4r