ACCURACY OF DIRECT & Rx TIMES AND INGRESSES
IN ASTROLOGY SOFTWARE

Copyright © 2006 All Rights Reserved

by David Cochrane

David Cochrane is main author of the Kepler and Pegasus program. He is the lead programmer and professional astrologer at Cosmic Patterns Software. Daivd is also the author of the Major Life Themes Report, Harmonic Highlights Report, and AstroLocality Report.

David was born May 1, 1949, at 4:26 AM in East Meadow, New York (time zone 5 hours west, daylight savings time observed). He has a BA degree in psychology, was a practicing astrologer in the mid 1970's and switched to computer programming in the late 1970's. He still practice astrology at the present time on special cases.

David began his astrology practice in 1973. He is a well known speaker in astrological community and astrological conferences. His lectures are well attended and well received. He is the founder Cosmic Patterns Software Inc., and is the lead software programmer of the development team that makes the Kepler and Pegasus astrology programs. He received a B.A. degree in 1972 with a major in psychology.

David pioneered some new theories of astrological interpretation using harmonics and midpoints in the 1970's, but since that time has been devoted to developing astrology software. David plans to continue working on the Kepler program for many, many years.

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Of these sources, only the Celestial Influences Calendar and Kepler 7 produced the result of July 23, 3:00 AM GMT, and have the hightest accuracy possible today for the purposes of astrologers.

ACCURACY OF INGRESS CALCULATIONS:

A customer noticed that for the Sun Ingress into Cancer for Los Angeles, California, Kepler gives a time of 5:25:52 AM PDT. He ran several other programs, with times varying from 5:23 to 5:26 AM. House cusps move about 1 minute in 4 seconds of time so a difference of a half minute, for example, would affect house cusp positions by 7 to 8 minutes on average, and sometimes more.

The Sun moves about 1 degree per day, which is equal to about 2 1/2 minutes of arc per hour, or 1 second of arc per 24 seconds of time. In other words, the Sun takes about 24 seconds of time to travel 1 second of arc. By trying different times I found that Kepler calculates the Sun to be at 0 degrees, 0 minutes, and 0 seconds of Cancer from 5:25:39 AM to 5:26:03 AM, which is 25 seconds, which is a reasonable value to expect. At a time about halfway through these 25 seconds, the Sun ingresses into Cancer. As one of the programmers of Kepler, I can stop the program during calculations, and by doing so I confirmed that the Sun entered Cancer between 5:25:51 AM and 5:25:52 AM, exactly the time that Kepler calculated. Therefore, Kepler's calculation is precisely accurate!

The only factor that could affect Kepler's accuracy is the accuracy of the calculation of the Sun's position. Like most astrology programs, Kepler uses the Swiss Ephemeris calculations, which are accepted as the most accurate available for astrology software. Therefore, the accuracy is the highest possible at this time. Interestingly, Kepler is the only program of the programs tested by this customer that calculated precisely the correct time of the Sun ingress into Cancer.

If you are a Kepler user, note that you can select Ingress charts and also eclipse charts and some other charts by selecting the "Get a Group" button in the data entry screen.

A FINAL TECHNICAL NOTE:

Kepler is using the assumptions that astrologers use, which is to take into account the time it takes for light to reach the Earth, not use refraction of light, etc., whereas astronomical calculations are sometimes, but not always, based on a different set of assumptions than what astrologers use.

There may be other factors that account for the discrepancy in times given by different programs that I am not aware of, but based on the above analysis, I believe that Kepler 7 produces a time for the stations of planets that is as accurate as is possible.

AUTHOR: David Cochrane