About the Star Wheel

The Graphic Ephemeris displays Transits, the monthly movement of the sun, moon and planets through the Zodiac, plotted onto a polar coordinate graph using recent NASA JPL data. As with a text Ephemeris, daily planet positions in the Star Wheel are given in geocentric Longitude Degrees & Minutes along the Ecliptic for midnight GMT of each day.

History & The Graphic Ephemeris Star Wheel

Astrology and Astronomy were once the same discipline - Astrologia, in ancient Latin. The Graphic Ephemeris shows the relationship between the two today.

The Star Wheel has both an inner and an outer "spectrum defined circle ring" each representing the Zodiac.

The inner circle is Astrology, mysticism. The outer (fainter) circle is Astronomy, science. Throughout the year, the sun, moon and planets, wind their way - identically - through both Zodiacs. The Star Wheel is an oxymoron, merging magic and reason.

Tropical and Sidereal Astrology are also represented here. Sidereal Astrology aligns closely with the outer Zodiac circle and precisely with the stars.

Tropical Astrology uses the inner Zodiac circle, retaining the constellation names, but not aligning with the stars. This is intentional, Western or Tropical Astrology - the sun sign horoscopes most people are familiar with - connects the seasons to prognostication, rather than the actual position of the stars.

The two zodiacs were once exactly aligned, but due to the Precession of the Equinoxes, they differ by about 24 degrees in the twenty-first century. They continue to drift apart counterclockwise, about one degree every 72 years.

Precession creates the great astrological Ages; currently moving from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius. In Astronomy, Precession determines the First Point of Aries – which is also the beginning of the Tropical Astrology Zodiac.

The Graphic Ephemeris presents the night sky as an analog timepiece, akin to the Antikythera Mechanism - the ruins of an ancient astronomical clock recovered from a two thousand year old sunken ship wreck.

The relic is presumed to have been constructed by the early Greeks who, unlike people of the modern era, did not distinguish between Astronomy and Astrology.

A complex arrangement of clockwork-like gears controlled the mechanism, as current day reconstructions of the device demonstrate. The Star Wheel, on the other hand, utilizes a database of coordinates driven by equations, to achieve a similar planetary cyclic rotation.