The Frame

The real sky

The real sky is the sky as it can be observed: planets measured against the actual stars behind them, in their true positions, from where you stand. There are three levels of closeness to it.

The actual constellations

• The official boundaries: in 1930 the International Astronomical Union adopted precise borders for all 88 constellations, drawn up by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte. Every point in the sky belongs to exactly one.
• Unequal sizes: along the Sun's path, Virgo is the widest at about 44°; Scorpius is the narrowest at about 7°.
• Thirteen, not twelve: the ecliptic also passes through Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer, for about 18°.

Dates are approximate and shift by about a day every 72 years with precession.

Ophiuchus, the thirteenth

• The figure: a man holding a great serpent (the constellation Serpens), identified with Asclepius, the healer taught by Chiron, who learned to raise the dead and was struck down by Zeus for it. His staff with one serpent is still the symbol of medicine.
• Why it was left out: the Babylonians knew the stars there but built a zodiac of twelve, matching the twelve months of the lunar year. Ophiuchus mostly lies above the ecliptic, with only its foot crossing the Sun's path.
• Themes used by constellational astrologers: healing, medicine and the serpent's wisdom; the power over life and death; knowledge that crosses forbidden lines; the one who stands between two worlds.

True positions

• True Node rather than mean: the Moon's actual crossing point at the moment.
• Natural (interpolated) Lilith and Priapus: the Moon's real apogee and perigee behavior.
• Apparent positions: where each body is actually seen, including the travel time of its light.
• Topocentric positions: measured from the birth place on Earth's surface rather than Earth's center. This matters most for the Moon, which can shift by up to about 1° depending on where you stand.
• Real star positions: the stars themselves move slowly (proper motion); true star-anchored systems follow their actual positions.

What astronomy confirms, and what it does not

• Confirmed: every position, cycle, eclipse, return, conjunction and alignment. Precession, the drift of the zodiacs, the real constellations. The sky in this manual is the real sky.
• Not confirmed: the meanings. Controlled studies, such as Shawn Carlson's test published in Nature in 1985, have not found that astrologers can reliably predict personality from charts. No known physical force from distant bodies accounts for symbolic effects.
• How practitioners hold this: many treat astrology not as a physical cause but as a symbolic language, a mirror of meaning written in cycles that are real. Others hold that it works and science has not yet caught up. Whatever one's view, the truest practice keeps the sky accurate and the interpretation honest about what it is.

The sidereal zodiac

The sidereal zodiac pins the twelve signs to the fixed stars. It is the older of the two frames, the one the Babylonians first drew, and the foundation of Vedic astrology.

Precession: why the zodiacs split

• Earth's axis traces a slow circle, like a spinning top, taking about 25,772 years to complete it.
• As it turns, the point where the Sun crosses the equator in March slides backward through the stars at about 50.3 arcseconds a year: 1° every 71.6 years, one full sign in about 2,150 years.
• The two zodiacs coincided sometime between roughly 200 and 500 CE (the exact year depends on the ayanamsha). They are now about 24° apart and still separating.

The great ages

The constellation behind the March equinox names the astrological age. Because the equinox moves backward, the ages run in reverse order.

The start of the Aquarian Age is disputed, with serious estimates ranging from the 1800s to the 2600s, because constellations have no agreed edges.

Signs vs constellations

• Sidereal signs are still twelve equal 30° divisions. The real constellations are unequal: Virgo spans over 40° of the ecliptic, Scorpius under 10°.
• The ecliptic also crosses Ophiuchus, the serpent bearer, between Scorpius and Sagittarius. Neither sidereal nor tropical astrology uses it as a sign; a few modern systems do.

Approximate sidereal Sun dates (Lahiri)

Vedic foundations

• Rashi: the twelve signs, ruled by the seven visible planets only. Rahu and Ketu, the lunar nodes, are treated as shadow planets.
• Nakshatras: twenty-seven lunar mansions of 13°20' each, the Moon's nightly stations. Each has a ruling planet, a presiding deity and a symbol, and each is divided into four padas of 3°20'.
• Vimshottari dasha: a 120-year cycle of planetary periods. The nakshatra of your natal Moon decides which period you are born into. Period lengths: Ketu 7 years, Venus 20, Sun 6, Moon 10, Mars 7, Rahu 18, Jupiter 16, Saturn 19, Mercury 17.
• Divisional charts (vargas): the chart subdivided for specific life areas. The navamsa (D9) is the most important, read for marriage, dharma and the soul's maturity.

The 27 nakshatras

The ruler sequence (Ketu, Venus, Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury) repeats three times around the zodiac, and it is the same order the dashas unfold in.

The draconitic zodiac and the lunar nodes

The draconitic zodiac starts its count at the Moon's North Node instead of the equinox or a star. To understand it, start with the Nodes themselves.

The lunar nodes

• What they are: the Moon's orbit is tilted about 5° to the Sun's path. The two points where it crosses that path are the Nodes. North Node: where the Moon crosses heading north. South Node: exactly opposite.
• Motion: the Nodes move backward through the zodiac, completing a circle every 18.6 years, about 1.5 years per sign.
• Eclipses: eclipses only happen when a New or Full Moon falls near the Nodes. The Nodes are the eclipse points, which is why they carry the weight of fate.
• Mean vs true Node: the mean Node moves smoothly backward; the true Node wobbles and occasionally moves forward. They differ by up to about 1.5°.
• The dragon: medieval astrologers called them Caput Draconis and Cauda Draconis, the Dragon's Head and Tail, imagining a dragon swallowing the Sun and Moon at eclipses. The draconic month, the Moon's return to the same Node, takes 27.21 days.
• Rahu and Ketu: in Hindu myth, the demon Svarbhanu drank the nectar of immortality during the churning of the ocean. Vishnu severed his head. The immortal head became Rahu (North Node), the body Ketu (South Node). Rahu hungers endlessly for experience; Ketu has already had it, and offers detachment, insight and liberation.
• Western meaning: North Node as the direction of growth, what feels unfamiliar but fulfilling. South Node as the inherited talent and comfort zone, sometimes read as past-life memory.

The draconitic zodiac

• Construction: the North Node becomes 0° Aries. Every body is re-measured by its distance from the Node. The whole chart rotates as a unit.
• What is preserved: every aspect between planets, and all midpoints.
• What shifts: signs, degrees, and the contacts between this chart and the ordinary tropical chart.
• Key figures: Pamela Crane, whose Draconic Astrology made the technique widely known, and Ronald Davison, who wrote on it earlier.

What it reveals

• The soul layer: tropical shows the personality meeting this life; draconitic shows the intention the soul brought into it.
• Draconitic Sun: the purpose the soul is trying to express.
• Draconitic Moon: the soul's emotional memory and needs.
• Draconitic Ascendant and MC: the soul's approach and its calling.
• Overlaying charts: where a draconitic planet falls on a tropical planet or angle, the soul's purpose fuses with the personality. These are read as defining signatures.
• Relationships: when one person's draconitic planets land on another's tropical points, it is read as an ancient or karmic bond, the sense of knowing someone before meeting them.
• Timing: some astrologers watch transits to draconitic positions and use draconic returns and progressions as a spiritual timing layer.

Its logic

The tropical zodiac is anchored to Earth's relationship with the Sun. The draconitic zodiac is anchored to the relationship between the Sun, Moon and Earth together, the eclipse cycle. That triple relationship is why it is read as the deeper, fated layer.

The ayanamsha

The ayanamsha (Sanskrit, roughly "the portion of the solstice movement") is the distance between the tropical and sidereal zodiacs. Everyone measures the same rate of precession; the argument is only about where sidereal Aries begins, and each answer carries its own philosophy about what anchors the sky.

Four philosophies

• Star-anchored: a specific star defines the zodiac. The question becomes: which star is the true marker?
• Historical reconstruction: recover the zodiac the ancients actually used, on the belief that the original is the authentic one.
• Teacher or revelation based: a master's calculation, often tied to a larger spiritual cosmology.
• Galactic: anchor the zodiac to the structure of the galaxy rather than to any single star.

The systems

Values are approximate and can differ by a few arcminutes from software figures.

Lahiri (Chitrapaksha)

In 1955 the Indian government's Calendar Reform Committee, chaired by the physicist Meghnad Saha, needed one standard for the national calendar. Astronomer N.C. Lahiri's value was adopted: the star Spica (Chitra) sits at 0° Libra, exactly opposite 0° Aries. The logic is ancient: Chitra marks the middle of the zodiac, so the start of Aries lies directly across from it. It is now the default for the great majority of Vedic astrologers worldwide.

True Chitra

The same idea as Lahiri, but it follows Spica's actual position each year, including the star's own slow motion, instead of a fixed formula. It differs from Lahiri by only minutes of arc; purists prefer it because the star itself is the authority.

Krishnamurti (KP)

K.S. Krishnamurti built a precise predictive method in the mid-20th century, Krishnamurti Paddhati, which divides each nakshatra into unequal sub-divisions ruled by the dasha lords. Because sub-lords change within fractions of a degree, his slightly adjusted value of Lahiri is integral to the system.

Raman

B.V. Raman, founder and editor of The Astrological Magazine and one of the most influential Indian astrologers of the 20th century, used his own value, about 1.5° less than Lahiri. His students and texts keep it alive.

Yukteshwar

Sri Yukteshwar Giri, guru of Paramahansa Yogananda, wrote The Holy Science in 1894. He taught that the yugas (world ages) rise and fall in a 24,000-year cycle tied to the Sun's motion around a companion star, and that humanity began ascending out of the darkest age around 1700 CE. His ayanamsha comes from that cosmology.

Fagan/Bradley

Irish astrologer Cyril Fagan argued in the mid-20th century that the Babylonians and Egyptians used a sidereal zodiac, and set out to recover its exact position. American astrologer Donald Bradley (who also wrote as Garth Allen) refined the figure statistically. Their Synetic Vernal Point is the anchor for Western sidereal astrology, and it sits about 1° from Lahiri.

Babylonian variants

Scholars of cuneiform astronomy, including Franz Xaver Kugler, Peter Huber and John Britton, reconstructed the zodiac of Babylonian tablets. Their answers differ by up to about a degree. These values matter to historians and to astrologers who want the zodiac as it was first drawn.

Hipparchos and Sassanian

• Hipparchos: based on the star positions of Hipparchus, discoverer of precession.
• Sassanian: based on the astronomical tables of Persia's Sassanian era, which passed Indian and Greek astronomy into the Islamic world.

Aldebaran at 15 Taurus

Aldebaran (the Bull's eye) and Antares (the Scorpion's heart) sit almost exactly opposite each other. Setting them at 15° Taurus and 15° Scorpio places this axis at the middle of the fixed signs. These are two of the four Royal Stars of Persia, the watchers of the sky, which gives the system its mythic weight.

True Revati

Revati, the last nakshatra, ends where Aries begins. This system places the star zeta Piscium at the end of Pisces, following older Indian texts such as the Surya Siddhanta that treat Revati as the junction point of the zodiac.

True Pushya

Promoted by P.V.R. Narasimha Rao, it fixes the star delta Cancri at the center of Pushya nakshatra. The reasoning: Pushya is the most auspicious nakshatra and should be anchored exactly.

Galactic Center

The center of the Milky Way currently lies near 27° Sagittarius tropical. Setting it at 0° Sagittarius (associated with Rafael Gil Brand) makes the galaxy's heart the start of the fire sign of meaning and truth. Another version, associated with Ernst Wilhelm, places it in the middle of Mula, the nakshatra of roots. The appeal: the anchor is the center of our home galaxy, not a nearby star.

Others

• De Luce: from American astrologer Robert DeLuce.
• Djwhal Khul: from the esoteric tradition of Alice Bailey's teachings.
• Usha-Shashi and J.N. Bhasin: Indian variants from individual authors.

What the choice actually changes

For most placements, nothing. Near a sign or nakshatra boundary, a difference of 1° can move a planet into a new sign, change its nakshatra and pada, and shift the entire dasha timeline by years. That is why Vedic traditions defend their ayanamsha so seriously.

For comparison: the tropical zodiac, the Western seasonal frame

This chapter is included for contrast only. The tropical zodiac follows the seasons, not the stars; since roughly the 4th century CE its signs have drifted away from the constellations they are named for, and today they sit almost a full sign apart. The sign meanings below apply in any zodiac; only where each sign begins differs.

The tropical zodiac divides the Sun's yearly path into twelve 30° signs measured from the March equinox. It is a calendar of light: it describes the relationship between Earth and Sun, not the background stars.

Where it comes from

• Babylon (about 1000 to 400 BCE): astronomers tracked the Moon and planets through stars along the ecliptic. Around the 5th century BCE they standardized twelve equal 30° signs, anchored to the stars.
• Hipparchus (about 130 BCE): comparing his star positions to older records, he discovered that the equinox slowly shifts against the stars. This is precession.
• Ptolemy (2nd century CE): in the Tetrabiblos he tied the signs to the equinoxes and solstices, arguing that the signs draw their natures from the seasons. At the time the two zodiacs nearly matched, so the choice cost nothing. It has divided Western and Indian astrology ever since.
• Transmission: through Hellenistic, Persian and Arabic astrologers into medieval Europe, the Renaissance, and modern psychological astrology.

The architecture

Every sign is a combination of three qualities, so no two signs share all three.

• Polarity: alternating active (fire, air) and receptive (earth, water).
• Element: fire (spirit, will), earth (matter, form), air (mind, relation), water (feeling, merging).
• Modality: cardinal signs begin each season and initiate; fixed signs hold the season at its peak and sustain; mutable signs end the season and adapt.
• The Aries Point: 0° of the cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn) mark the equinoxes and solstices. Planets here are read as touching the public world.

The signs as the story of a year

Dates shift by a day or so from year to year. Scorpio's modern rulership by Pluto, Aquarius's by Uranus, and Pisces's by Neptune were added after those planets were discovered; traditional astrologers keep only the seven visible rulers.

Why tropical astrologers keep it

• The signs describe the quality of time on Earth, which is what humans live inside.
• The equinoxes and solstices are exact, observable events; star boundaries are not.
• Two thousand years of Western interpretation, from Ptolemy to modern psychology, was built on this frame.

The Southern Hemisphere question

In the Southern Hemisphere, the Sun enters Aries in autumn. Most astrologers keep the same signs, because the equinox is the same celestial moment everywhere. A minority experiment with reversed signs; it has never become standard.

Vantage and light: geocentric, heliocentric, and the speed of light

Every chart answers the question "seen from where?" Geocentric astrology answers "from the life being lived." Heliocentric astrology answers "from the source."

A short history of the center

• Ptolemy (2nd century): placed Earth at the center of the cosmos. Astrology and astronomy grew up together inside this model.
• Copernicus (1543): placed the Sun at the center. Astronomy changed; astrology mostly did not, because the chart was always about the view from Earth, whatever the physics.
• Kepler (early 1600s): the astronomer who proved the planets move in ellipses was also a working astrologer, and argued that geocentric astrology remained valid as the view of the observer.

Geocentric: the lived view

• What it measures: directions from the center of the Earth, or from the birth place itself (topocentric, a refinement used by a minority).
• What it makes possible: the Moon, the Ascendant and Midheaven, the houses, the Nodes and Lilith. Everything personal and local.
• Retrograde motion: planets appear to move backward when Earth overtakes them (or they overtake Earth). Astrologers read retrogrades as review, return and inwardness. Retrograde exists only from this vantage.
• Why it remains the standard: a human life is lived on Earth, under a particular horizon, at a particular hour. The geocentric chart is the sky that person actually stood beneath.

Heliocentric: the view from the source

• What it measures: directions from the Sun's center.
• What disappears: the Moon (it orbits Earth), the angles and houses (there is no local horizon), the lunar Nodes and Lilith, and all retrogrades.
• What appears: Earth itself, always exactly opposite the geocentric Sun. Mercury and Venus, which from Earth never stray far from the Sun, can now fall anywhere in the zodiac and aspect anything.
• Planetary nodes: every planet's orbit crosses the ecliptic at two points. In heliocentric work these planetary nodes become important sensitive points.
• Interpretations:
  
• Soul perspective: the helio chart as the view from the Sun, the self before incarnation, purpose without personality.
• Earth as a planet: read as the incarnational task, where the soul meets the physical world.
• Collective and cyclical: used to study planetary cycles and their links to historical and solar activity. Theodor Landscheidt's work on solar cycles is a notable example.
• Financial astrology: helio aspects follow clean orbital rhythms, so some market astrologers use them for timing.
• In practice: helio charts are read alongside the geocentric chart, not in place of it.

The speed of light

• The fact: light travels at about 299,792 km per second. Sunlight is about 8 minutes 20 seconds old when it arrives. Light from Jupiter is 33 to 53 minutes old, from Saturn about 70 to 90 minutes, from Pluto 4 to 7 hours.
• Apparent position: where a body appears in the sky at a given moment. It includes the light-time delay, plus aberration (the tilt of incoming light caused by Earth's own motion) and nutation (a small nodding of Earth's axis). Almanacs and astrology use this by default.
• Geometric (true) position: where the body actually is at that instant, with the travel time of its light removed.
• How large the gap is: under a second of arc for the Moon, and usually well under a minute of arc for the planets. Symbolically meaningless for most purposes, but real.
• The philosophical question: should a chart show the sky you see, or the sky that is? Almost all astrology chooses the sky you see, since experience is what the chart describes. Researchers and heliocentric purists sometimes choose the sky that is.

Appendix: chart settings reference

How it all fits together

Every chart is built from four independent choices: which zodiac, where you stand, how precisely positions are measured, and which objects are shown. Change any one and the chart changes, while the others stay put.

Adding objects on astro.com: open Extended Chart Selection and type codes into the Additional objects box, separated by commas. Asteroids use their plain number (433 for Eros). Hypothetical points and Lilith variants use h codes (h13, h40). Comets and 'Oumuamua use their 999xxx numbers. You can mix all three in one chart, for example: 433, 2060, h13, h21, h40.

Everything here is written from general astrological and astronomical knowledge, not looked up today. Keywords reflect common usage; individual schools vary.

Zodiacs

The three zodiacs use the same twelve 30° signs but start counting from different places: the season, the stars, or the Moon's Node.

Tropical

• Anchor: 0° Aries is the March equinox, when the Sun crosses the celestial equator heading north.
• Logic: the signs track the seasons. Aries is spring's first push, Cancer the summer solstice, Libra the autumn balance, Capricorn the winter solstice. The four cardinal signs mark the four turning points of the year.
• History: codified by Ptolemy in the 2nd century CE, carried through Hellenistic, Persian, Arabic and medieval European astrology into modern Western practice.
• What it describes: psychology, temperament and life themes as they unfold through Earth-based cycles.
• Caveat: in the Southern Hemisphere the seasons are reversed, yet the signs are not. Most astrologers accept this because the equinox is a celestial event, not a local weather one.

Sidereal

• Anchor: the fixed stars. Each sign roughly matches the constellation it was named for, though sidereal signs are still equal 30° slices, not the uneven real constellations.
• Why it differs: Earth's axis wobbles like a spinning top over about 25,800 years (precession). The equinox slides backward through the stars about 1° every 72 years. The two zodiacs lined up roughly 1,700 to 2,000 years ago; today they are about 24° apart.
• Practical effect: most placements move back one sign. A tropical Sun at 2° Sagittarius becomes about 8° Scorpio in Lahiri sidereal. Placements past about 24° of a sign usually stay in the same sign.
• Where it is used: Vedic astrology (Jyotish), Western sidereal astrology (Fagan/Bradley school), and Hellenistic reconstruction work.
• Vedic extras it carries: the 27 nakshatras (lunar mansions of 13°20' each), dasha timing periods, and divisional charts such as the navamsa (D9).

Draconitic

• Anchor: the North Node becomes 0° Aries. Every planet keeps its exact distance from the Node, so the whole chart rotates by the Node's tropical position.
• What stays the same: all aspects between planets, and the house structure if you keep the same houses.
• What changes: signs and degrees of every point, which creates new contacts between this chart and the tropical one.
• Interpretation: developed mainly by Pamela Crane and Ronald Davison. Read as the soul chart: underlying purpose, spiritual intent, karmic memory. Tropical shows the personality in this life; draconitic shows what drives it.
• Main techniques:
  
• Overlay the draconitic chart on the tropical chart and look for draconitic planets within 1° of tropical angles or planets.
• Synastry: someone's draconitic planet on your tropical Sun, Moon or Ascendant is read as a soul-level recognition.
• Transits to draconitic points, used as a secondary timing layer.

Ayanamsha

The ayanamsha is the number of degrees subtracted from tropical positions to get sidereal ones; it only matters when Sidereal is selected. Everyone agrees on the rate of precession (about 50.3 arcseconds a year), but not on the starting point, so each system is a different answer to one question: where does sidereal Aries begin?

Values are approximate from memory and can differ by a few arcminutes from astro.com's figures.

Which to choose: Lahiri for Vedic work unless a teacher or text says otherwise. Fagan/Bradley for Western sidereal. The choice matters most near sign or nakshatra boundaries, where a 1° difference can move a planet into the next sign or change its nakshatra lord and dasha sequence.

Perspective and precision

Geocentric is the standard for any personal chart; heliocentric and uncorrected positions are specialist tools.

Geocentric vs heliocentric

Heliocentric interpretation often reads Earth as the incarnational purpose, and treats the chart as the view from the solar self, free of any personal vantage point. Financial astrologers such as Bill Meridian have used heliocentric aspects because they follow clean orbital rhythms.

Light-time correction

• What it is: light takes about 8 minutes from the Sun, 1 to 1.5 hours from Saturn, and 4 to 5 hours from Pluto. We see each body where it was when its light left.
• With correction (default): gives apparent positions, where the planet appears in the sky. This matches published ephemerides and nearly all astrology software.
• Without correction: gives geometric positions, where the planet actually is at that instant.
• Size of the difference: tiny. Under a second of arc for the Moon, and usually well under one minute of arc for the planets.
• When to turn it off: research, very exact timing of transits or returns, or heliocentric work where a purely geometric picture is wanted. For natal readings, leave it on.

Lunar apogee and perigee: Lilith and Priapus

Black Moon Lilith is not a body; it is the empty focus point where the Moon is farthest from Earth. Priapus is the opposite end, where the Moon is closest. The versions differ only in how the wobbling orbit is calculated.

Meanings

• Lilith: named for the figure in Jewish folklore who refused to submit to Adam and left Eden. Associated with exile, rejection, taboo, raw sexuality, female rage, refusal to be tamed, and where we feel shamed or cast out. By house and sign it shows where you must claim what others forbid.
• Priapus: named for the Greek fertility god. Read as Lilith's counterpart: vitality, instinctual drive, embodiment, appetite and physical presence. Some read it as the point that tempts or pulls you toward embodiment, while Lilith is the point that withdraws.
• The axis together: the tension between withdrawal and engagement, the untamed self and the bodily self.

Related points (not on the list, often confused)

• Asteroid 1181 Lilith: a real asteroid, different placement and meaning; often read as the defiant feminine in relationships.
• Waldemath Black Moon (h58) and Sepharial's Dark Moon: a hypothetical second moon, covered under Other hypothetical bodies.
• White Moon Selena (h56): a symbolic opposite of Lilith, also covered below.

Comets and interstellar objects

These are real physical bodies. Historically comets were read as omens and messengers of sudden change; in modern practice they matter most in mundane charts, event charts, and natal charts of people born while the comet was bright or near perihelion.

Related interstellar objects not on the list: 2I/Borisov (a comet, 2019) and 3I/ATLAS (found July 2025).

How to use them: check whether a comet sits within 1 to 2° of a natal planet or angle, note its house, and treat it as a flash or wake-up theme there. For long-period comets, the natal position only matters for people born during that comet's visible window, since it barely moves in the zodiac the rest of the time.

Uranian planets (Hamburg School)

The eight Uranian or Trans-Neptunian points are symbolic, not physical: no telescope has found them, and astronomy has ruled out planets of the sizes and distances once proposed. They exist as calculated positions used in a precise, event-focused technique.

Origins and method

• Founders: Alfred Witte (1878 to 1941), a Hamburg surveyor and astrologer, proposed the first four from studying event timing. His student Friedrich Sieggrün added the last four.
• Core text: Regelwerk für Planetenbilder (Rules for Planetary Pictures), by Witte and Ludwig Rudolph, a dictionary of midpoint combinations.
• Technique: the 90° dial, which folds all hard aspects together; midpoints (the halfway point between two bodies); and planetary pictures, formulas like A + B minus C, where a third body completes an equation.
• Personal points: the Aries Point (the world), MC (the self), Ascendant (the environment), Sun, Moon and Node (connections).
• Offshoot: Reinhold Ebertin's Cosmobiology kept the midpoints and dial but dropped the eight hypothetical points.
• Movement: very slow, so on their own they are generational. They become personal when they sit on a midpoint or personal point.

The eight points

The code hh adds all eight at once.

Example planetary pictures

• Sun + Cupido: the self in family or group life; a public role in a community.
• Moon + Hades: hidden or old emotions, care for the forgotten; in a difficult picture, emotional heaviness.
• Venus + Zeus: passionate, directed desire; creative drive.
• MC + Kronos: personal authority, recognition as an expert.
• Mercury + Poseidon: spiritual or inspired thinking, clear insight.

Other hypothetical bodies

All of these are calculated points for bodies that were proposed but never confirmed, with one exception: Planet 9 remains an open scientific question.

Nibiru in the ancient sources: in genuine Babylonian texts, Nibiru means a crossing point or ferry. In Enuma Elish it is associated with Marduk and usually identified by scholars with Jupiter or a point on the sky it crosses, not a hidden planet. This is worth knowing if you use it alongside ancient Near Eastern material.

Mean vs true: several of these, like Lilith, have multiple calculation schemes in the wider literature. Astro.com's codes each pick one.

Asteroids

Astro.com can place any of about 26,454 named minor planets in a chart by number. They are read by myth, by name, and by the theme of the name, with tight orbs.

The name/number list

• What it is: Astrodienst's index of named minor planets in the Swiss Ephemeris. Each has an official number from the Minor Planet Center, assigned in order of confirmed orbit, then a name approved by the International Astronomical Union.
• Who they are named for: mythological figures, scientists, cities, artists, discoverers' families, and many ordinary first names.
• How astrologers use it: search for your name, the names of people in your life, places that matter to you, or concepts (Karma, Destiny, Soul). An asteroid carrying a meaningful name that sits on a personal point is read as a signature.
• Orbs: keep them tight, about 1° for conjunctions and oppositions. With thousands available, loose orbs make everything look significant.
• Priority: conjunctions to the Sun, Moon, Ascendant, MC and chart ruler first; everything else is secondary.

Key asteroids and minor bodies

Centaurs and trans-Neptunian objects move slowly, so their sign is generational and their house and aspects are personal.

Quick code reference

Type these into astro.com's Additional objects box, separated by commas.

A good starter set for a natal chart: 1, 2, 3, 4, 2060, h12, h21, h22. Add hh for Uranian work, or 90377, 136199 for outer-body themes.

Appendix: zodiac systems at a glance

Zodiac options

• Tropical: the Western standard. 0° Aries is the spring equinox, so the signs are tied to the seasons, not the stars. This is what most Western astrology (and your usual chart) uses.
• Sidereal: the signs are aligned with the actual constellations. Because Earth's axis slowly wobbles (precession), the two zodiacs drift apart about 1° every 72 years. Right now they're roughly 24° apart, so most people's sidereal placements fall one sign back. Used in Vedic (Jyotish) astrology and Western sidereal astrology.
• Draconitic: 0° Aries is placed at your North Node, and everything else is shifted to match. It's read as the "soul chart": karmic purpose, spiritual intent, or who you are beneath personality. Usually compared against the tropical chart rather than used on its own.

Ayanamsha This is the number of degrees between the tropical and sidereal zodiacs, and only matters if you choose Sidereal. Traditions disagree on exactly where the sidereal zodiac starts, so there are many options. The main ones:

• Lahiri (Chitrapaksha): the official standard in India, anchored so the star Spica sits at 0° Libra. The default for Vedic astrology.
• Fagan/Bradley: the main Western sidereal system, about 1° different from Lahiri.
• Krishnamurti (KP): very close to Lahiri, used in the KP system of Vedic astrology.
• Raman: from B.V. Raman, about 1.5° less than Lahiri.
• Yukteshwar: from Sri Yukteshwar's book The Holy Science, based on his yuga cycle theory.
• True Chitra, True Revati, True Pushya: fix a specific star at an exact point and follow that star's true position.
• Babylonian variants (Kugler, Huber, Britton, etc.): reconstructions of the original Babylonian zodiac, the oldest sidereal system.
• Galactic Center variants: anchor the zodiac to the center of the Milky Way, often at 0° Sagittarius.
• Hipparchos, Sassanian, Aldebaran/15 Taurus, De Luce, Djwhal Khul, and others: historical or school-specific choices.

If you're not following a particular tradition, Lahiri is the safe pick for Vedic and Fagan/Bradley for Western sidereal.

Geocentric vs Heliocentric

• Geocentric: the chart is calculated from Earth's point of view. This is standard for all personal astrology, since you were born on Earth.
• Heliocentric: the chart is calculated from the Sun's point of view. There's no Moon, no Ascendant, no houses, no retrogrades, and Earth itself appears as a planet opposite where the Sun would be. Some use it for soul-level or collective themes, and some financial astrologers use it for market timing.

Without light-time correction Light takes time to reach us (about 8 minutes from the Sun, hours from outer planets), so we see planets where they were, not where they are. Standard charts correct for this to show apparent positions. Turning the correction off shows each planet's true geometric position at that instant. The difference is tiny, usually well under a degree, and matters only for precision work like exact timing of transits or research. For ordinary chart reading, leave it on.