Website Navigation
Now that the Navigation Menus have had some ‘time to dry’ I’ll add a few comments and suggestions here for Navigating around the present build of the Astro-Ref site . In general, the navigation should be pretty easy to follow, as the website isn’t yet big enough to require a site map page. But since this is sort of a ‘Phoenix project’, some additional refinements in the reference tables is forthcoming to make for easier or smoother surfing around the website.
The Ephemera, Aspectarians, and Planet Cycles Main Menu use the same basic format. Make sure that you’ve selected from each requested column for the Year, Time Zone, Planet Pairs, or Sort Order before clicking the ‘Select’ button.
The Ephemeris Tables are prepared as yearly files with a menu at the top of each year’s info that allows you to switch to different months within the year selected. If you use the menu at the top of the Ephemeris Table to get to different months, rather than scrolling through the entire year, clicking on the [Back] menu option will take you immediately back to the Main Ephemera Menu.
Whenever you are on web pages that have links ’embedded’ in them to move around, you will see the ‘address’ of each selected link change; but each ‘new’ selection will be ‘remembered’ by your browser as a separate webpage address. So after clicking around to different ‘bookmarks’ on the same page, using the back button on your web browser will take several clicks to get to the point where you actually started. The [Back] option on the ephemera menu has been added to make this process easier and more efficient.
The Aspects tables have this same [Back] feature, although each month’s aspects is a separate webpage, rather than an entire year’s aspects. But the convenience factor is the same with the [Back] menu selection.
The Moon’s phases and Void-Of-Course tables are navigated as you normally would, with your browser. But on these pages, you can also use the Main Menu Bar across the top, to go to the other areas of the website.
Accuracy of Reference Tables
One of the pet peeves among some astrologers and many astronomers is in the accuracy of calculated data for stellar positions and events. For space travelers, this makes absolute perfect sense’, as very small numeric differences or disparities can result in very large errors when planning space voyages, or plotting planets and other stellar bodies.
In astrology, in the areas of Progressions, Return charts, and especially, Harmonic charts, small differences in time or planet positions (interchangeably) can also make a difference in the planning or interpretation of events. So we would always like to have the data we work with as accurate as possible.
I’ve already commented on the development of the Ephemera tables used for the site at present, as having been generated by Mark Pottenger’s CCRS ™ program. This data was actually compiled in a chart file, using a modified batch input routine that allowed CCRS to process a chart for each calendar day for 0 Hr’s GMT (time zone 0) over a specified range of dates. The resulting data in the CCRS-calculated, compiled chart files was then translated (ported) into DataBase tables, that are the sources for the website ephemera. Accuracy in the CCRS program is within a few seconds of arc, which is, for the most part, adequate for most astrological applications.
The aspects tables provided here have been generated in a more roundabout manner. In CCRS, as with many other Astrology programs (with perhaps exception to very recent generations), aspects are available only as a table printout for browsing. In simple terms, aspects reports done in this fashion usually round off the degrees and minutes of an aspect to whole values, rather than carrying the additional ‘decimal points’ of accuracy that is actually generated, or calculated, when the report is prepared for printing. The rounding off of the planet positions, and also another rounding-off process when posting the actual time of each event (as in Hours:Minutes), poses some problems when trying to translate these to another data source, or database. For the less technical visitors, suffice it to say here that, the times of most of the events (aspects posted) should be within 2-10 minutes, in clock time, of accuracy, you will still find the accuracy of the aspects as more than satisfactory, overall.
For the more technically minded, I’ll briefly address this type of data porting, as some who are using other astrology freeware (like AstroLog) might find this worthwhile, or of some use.
When I tackled the task of converting the aspect reports back into Database tables, the numbers that were processed are in a rounded off (truncated) value; that is, in whole minutes within any degree of zodiac position. This conversion first happens when we translate the Hrs:Mins of time into a numeric form, as Hr.ffff where ‘.fff’ is the minutes expressed as a fractional part of an Hour (or minutes divided by 60 ). Having done a similar conversion for planet positions from degree:minutes to Degree.ffff , we can get the aspect events into our database, spreadsheet, or what have you.
When reporting the aspects events into a format like they originally came from, we will need to once again convert the numeric data back into the way it was originally posted. In summary then, by having to perform two data conversions (one for the planet positions and the other for the actual time of the event), we will most always encounter some rounding-off errors in the conversions; hence some of the actual event times may be off a tad, although not glaringly so!
Due to these minor glitches in the aspectarians tables now in place, the ingresses, planet cycles, Lunar Cycles, and Void Moon tables also come under this heading; as all of these pages are generated from the main aspects tables I work with in my research environment . I’ve already examined a number of events in these tables, comparing and checking them for accuracy against formally generated charts using the times posted in them, respectively, for different events.
The main point of emphasis here is that the reference tables here have been designed and compiled as accurately as possible; so much so that, other than very detailed progressions, returns, or harmonic work, or perhaps in some electional work, the data here can be used with confidence as very good reference source. If you do happen to find any other ‘bugs’ here, please feel free to post these in your comments.
EH
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