What do Astrologers Know of Astronomy? - By Tim Metcalfe

As the scientific community has pulled away from historic Astrological analogies and methodologies, the fact still remains that astronomy's ancestral line is rooted in Astrology. Even today, The worlds top scientists and physicians are learning to swallow the bitter pill that there may be some truth in Astrology. The magic of Astrology  is in its symbolism and although there are differing methods of Astrology, and yes even astrologers argue its true nature, it provides an insight into our human condition that the rigid structures of science cannot achieve. These ancient astrological methods were understood in depth by our ancestors and are only beginning to be fathomed by modern science.

In order to become a good astrologer, you must have an understanding of planetary movement, how to map the stars and planets in the skies. The efforts of great observers like Tycho Brahe in the late 16th century who's charting of planetary movements paved the way for for the theorist Johannes Kepler to provide the world with his laws of planetary motion, telling us that the planets move in an elliptical orbit around the sun at a calculable speed, have allowed us the capacity to plot the movement of the heavens.

The diagram above shows the apparent movement of the sun around the earth as seen from the earth. The path of the sun is called the "ecliptic". Around the ecliptic are the twelve constellations of the zodiac, so that at any point through one calendar year the sun will be "in" one of the signs of the zodiac as it travels around the earth. When the sun reaches its highest point on the ecliptic above the celestial equator, this is called "Summer Solstice", from which the "Tropic of Cancer" line of latitude can be drawn, as this is where the sun moves into Cancer. The opposite of this is when the sun reaches its lowest point on the ecliptic "Winter Solstice", from which the "Tropic of Capricorn" line of latitude can be drawn, as this is when the sun moves in to Capricorn.

Using the diagram above you can also see the celestial equator being used as a reference for plotting the position of the sun at summer solstice. This co-ordinate system is called the Equatorial System. At summer solstice the sun is at 6hours Right Ascension and 23.5 degrees Declination. To understand this imagine you are stood in a room facing a door. Hold out your arm to point at the door directly in front of you. Let's say that this is 0 hours right ascension, now turn your whole body 90 degrees to your left keeping your arm straight so that you are now pointing at a window. The window is 6 hours Right ascension from the door. This is true because 6 hours is a quarter of 24 hours (1 day) as is 90 degrees a quarter of 360 degrees (A full circle). Got it!?

If you now raise your arm to point at the curtain rail above the window the angle you have raised your arm is the angle of declination 0 to 90 degrees North and 0 to 90 degrees south. Using this system you can plot any item in the room using 2 co-ordinates of right ascension and declination.  In the equatorial system 0 degrees right ascension is at 0 degrees Aries (Where the sun moves into Aries and the ecliptic bisects the celestial equator) otherwise known as the Vernal Equinox.

* The co-ordinate system used predominantly by Astrologers is the ecliptic system where the suns ecliptic is used as the x-axis where the degrees of the signs of the zodiac are used as points of reference as the planets move through them. This co-ordinate is called Celestial Longitude, and the planetary wobble I mentioned earlier where the planets move above and below the ecliptic is called Celestial Latitude.

Welcome to the Celestial Sphere!!