Astro Gold MacOS 5 User Guide

Wheel and Dial Styles

In terms of general display options this contains a selection of wheel and dial styles for Single, biWheel/biDial, triWheel/triDial and quadriWheel/quadriDial charts. As you can see in the graphic below, Astro Gold comes with various different wheel and dial styles for you to choose from, regardless of whether it's a single wheel or dial, or a quadri wheel or dial, or something in between. Just select the style you want from the dropdown lists by clicking on the , then clicking on the item you want.

Wheel function/purpose

The wheels are named in a fairly self explanatory way to describe what they are designed for, or to do. Further explanation for some of the wheels is ...

DecRulers.wh1:        shows the Decanate rulers

SgnRulers.wh1:        shows the Sign rulers

TermPtol.wh1:        shows Ptolemaic Term rulers*

TermEgyp.wh1:        shows Egyptian Term rulers*

 

Click on Terms for more info.

Retrograde Planets

The default wheel styles omit retrograde symbols and instead show degrees and minutes in red to indicate retrograde status. This is helpful in allowing us to display the planet, degree and sign glyphs at a larger size, which makes them easier to read on smaller screen sizes.

However, some wheel options also exist to allow the Πsymbol to be displayed while necessarily also adjusting down the sizes of the planet degree and sign glyphs accordingly. Wheels displaying the Πsymbol that ship with Astro Gold are:

•Euro1.wh1

•Euro2.wh1

•NoHouses.wh1 (no house numbers are visible)

•TMann.wh1

•Uni1.wh1

•Uni2.wh1

Or you can use the Wheel Editor to create a new wheel design, or adapt an existing one, so that it does include the Œ symbol in its chart rings.

Wheel Ring Fill Tints and Colors

Choose the color tint and color intensity used for coloring in the wheel rings in the Ring Fill Tint Color dropdown list. The pop-up menu offering wheel tint color options includes a small color sample preview next to the menu item. You can specify if this color is used to tint all the wheel rings displayed, or only the very inner ring where the house numbers are displayed and the very outer ring where the signs are displayed - see Auto Chart Ring Colors below.  

Planet, Sign and Aspect Colors

You can also choose different planet, sign glyph and fill, and aspect colors. And you're not limited to just one lot of colors for each of these parts of an astrology chart. For each you can create a set of colors then save that set under a name you give it, and then reuse that set of colors for that part of the chart anytime you want.

To do this click in the setting field for the chart part (Planets, Sign Glyphs, Sign Fills, Aspects) you want to select colors for, e.g. Planets. When you do a dialog box with all those items (e.g. planets) pops up (the graphic below shows the dialog box that pops up when you click in the setting field for Planets).

You can click in the Color Set dropdown list to select from all the available color sets one you want to use for choosing the colors from for the particular chart part (planets, syn glyphs etc) items you are setting colors for.

You are not limited to using the existing Color sets though, as you can design and make new color sets for chart parts (planets, sign glyphs, sign fills and aspects). You do this by designing the color for each chart part item (planet, sign, sign fill or aspect) in turn, and then saving that lot of colors as a set, called anything you want to call it, and then that set of colors is added to the other Color sets in the dropdown box, available for use with any chart part anytime. 

To design a color for a chart part item (a planet, a sign glyph, a sign fill or an aspect) - in the dialog box displaying those items click on the particular item you want to choose a color for (e.g. in the "Planets" dialog box shown above click on, say, Jupiter). When you do the Color Designer will open so you can create the color you want for that particular item (e.g. Jupiter).

Designing the color is basically just a case of clicking on the color you want, then altering the lightness/darkness of the color using the slider at the bottom directly underneath the color circle.

Once you have created a color (i.e. it's showing in the large rectangle in the bottom left of the Color Designer) it will immediately be updated in the dialog box for the particular chart part item you are designing a color for, e.g. the Planet (Jupiter) you initially clicked on in the dialog box. If you want to save that color in the Color Designer so you can use it another time for any item, with the mouse drag it from the large rectangle in the bottom left of the Color Designer over to an unused cell in the two rows of storage cells to the right of the large rectangle in the bottom left of the Color Designer.

 

Using the Color Designer's Color Tools

Across the top of the Color Designer are five color tools. From the left they are:

•color wheel

•color sliders

•color palettes

•image palettes

•pencils

Each of these presents you with a different way of designing the color you want, mostly by clicking on the color or pencil, or by moving sliders.

One last color tool is at the bottom of the Color Designer, called the Dropper .  Click on this and the mouse cursor becomes a large circular magnifying glass with a dot in the middle, magnifying whatever on the screen is directly underneath it. You can move the mouse around the screen and as you do the colors directly underneath the mouse appear in the magnifying circle. When the dot in the middle of the circle is on the color you want to capture click the mouse button. That color will then be in the large rectangle in the bottom left of the Color Designer, and so will have colored the chart item you are working on with that color too. The Dropper will also have been closed.

Note: Sign Fills are only displayed on some Wheel/Dial styles.

Station Options

Planets move in their orbits (line of travel) around the Sun at different speeds - the closer to the Sun the planet is the faster the planet moves, and the further away from the Sun the planet is the slower it moves in its orbit. Not only that, the closer to the Sun a planet is the shorter its orbit around the Sun is. So a planet closer to the Sun not only moves faster around the Sun but also has less distance to travel to complete a full orbit around the Sun. These two affects combined give rise to the phenomenon known as "retrograde" planetary motion.

Retrograde motion arises when from Earth a planet on its orbit around the Sun appears to stop moving forward through the zodiac in the sky and instead moves backwards through the zodiac. So say a planet was at 15° Libra then a week later was at 12° Libra - what has happened?  Retrograde motion (apparent travel in reverse) occurs when a planet on its orbit, due to traveling faster on a shorter orbit (pathway) around the Sun overtakes a planet on an orbit further out from the Sun.

There are two situations regarding this. Firstly, with planets that orbit the Sun beyond the Earth, as the outer planet is being overtaken by Earth (on its "inner" track), the outer planet appears to slow down, then stop for a short while, then start moving backwards in the zodiac around its orbit.

Secondly, with planets whose orbits are between Earth and the Sun (inside Earth), as those planets start catching up to Earth they appear to slow down then stop moving, and then as they are approaching the same zodiac position as Earth they appear to be traveling backwards through the zodiac, then as they pass inside (overtake) Earth and pull away from Earth on their inside track (orbit) they appear to again slow down then stop then resume moving forwards through the zodiac again.

Using the first situation (involving say Earth and Mars) as an example, with Earth traveling faster than Mars around its shorter orbit than Mars travels around its own (longer) more outer orbit, how the the retrograde motion of Mars arises and then discontinues can be clearly seen in the graphic below.

The gap (or point in time) between when a planet's apparent motion going forward through the zodiac (direct motion) and then going backwards (retrograding) through the zodiac is called "stationary motion". And the same is the case when a planet's apparent motion going backwards (retrograding) through the zodiac and then going forwards (direct) through the zodiac is also called "stationary motion". These two points are labeled in orange in the graphic below.

Clicking on the Station Options button opens a dialog box where you can set the way that these "stations" (periods of no planetary motion) are "defined". The actual period of non movement is one thing but astrologers also sometimes like to also include some of the "slowing down" phase along with the actual non moving phase in the definition of "this planet is stationary". Also since the period of time that planets are non moving varies greatly depending on the speed of the planet in its orbit, it can also be handy to have the option of using a relatively uniform way of measuring the actual non moving period, regardless of the planet's speed.

•Within hours of exactness will standardize all planets to that amount of non-moving time.

•Within orb of exactness for each planet will vary in exact proportion all the planets' speeds vary.

•Below a specified speed will partially standardize all planets, but they will still vary slightly depending on their relative normal direct motion speed. The smaller the setting the less variation, and vice versa. A setting of 0 will equate to the exact actual non-moving period of each planet. In that case the closer the planet to the Sun the shorter the stationary period will be.

•Below % of average speed will give similar amounts of stationary time for the planets but always with some variations, so this is a good general relative standardization of the stationary ("non-moving") time period for all the planets.

Once you have entered your preferences for how Stations are to be defined Astro Gold will consider a planet as being stationary ("non moving") according to these settings. Not all wheel styles are designed to show retrograde motion so this will not apply when those wheel styles are in use.

Remaining Wheel Options

The remaining options below are alternatively turned on (ticked) or off (blank) by continuously clicking on them. These options are applied individually in whatever combination you prefer.

•"Auto Chart Ring Colors": when this is switched on, in the "Selected Charts" pane the chart details for the various charts (inner, middle or outer) will be in a different color (that shown below for auto chart ring colors) depending on what type of chart is selected for that ring of the wheel, plus the same color will be used to tint the rings in a wheel which are displaying the type of chart designated to have that color in astro chart ring colors. The auto chart ring colors are permanent and cannot be changed by the user.

•"Show Aspect Lines": are the lines drawn between planets in the middle of the chart, showing the angle between the planets. You can switch these on or off.

•"Show Aspect Glyphs: if aspect lines are switched on then a glyph depicting the aspect the line represents is drawn near the middle of the aspect line when this is switched on.

•"Proportional Houses" allow house division lines to expand beyond their normal symmetrical shape, if that's necessary to fit a large number of planets into the drawn house area.

•"Shadowed Glyphs" means a shadow is drawn around planet and sign glyphs.

•"Thicker aspect lines for tighter orbs":  increases line thickness up to a multiple of 10 for closest orbs.

•"Fainter aspect lines for looser orbs":  decreases opacity down to 20% for loosest orbs.

•For dials and midpoints you can also specify the dial degrees (45/90/360) and max orb to be allowed when determining midpoints using the dial.

Example

Below shows the rings of a quadriWheel with mixed tinting, derived from the "Auto Chart Ring Colors" above, which are switched on.

The inner ring chart is a natal chart, and while the mid-inner ring chart isn't a natal chart it's a static (non dynamic) type of chart. Both these are designated to have a gold color for text and for ring tinting.

The mid-outer ring chart has a progressions chart which has blue as the designated color for text and for ring tinting, and the outer chart is a transits chart which has green as designated color for text and for ring tinting

The very innermost ring of the quadriWheel that has the house numbers in it, and the very outermost ring that has the zodiac signs and degrees in it, are both always the color designated by the Ring Fill Tint Color (which as you can see below is Blue).

 

When "Auto Chart Ring Colors" is switched off (by clicking on the blue tick) then the color for the text everywhere on the screen reverts to the color specified for that part of the chart (see above at the beginning of the Wheels topic). In wheels the very innermost house ring and very outermost zodiac ring default to the "Ring Fill Tint Color". All the other chart rings have no background color, are white.