Computer programs




	There are numerous computer programs that allow you to produce charts and much more. Most of these are quite expensive, but there is one program which is totally free of charge and yet has a huge range of features. This program is Astrolog, initially developed by Walter Pullen, and subsequently improved by Valentin Abramov (known as “Valja”), and more recently updated to work better on Windows 32-bit systems (eg Windows XP) by Antonió Ramos. The program is known as “open source”, which means that not only is it totally free of charge (it’s not shareware, it’s freeware), but if you’re a programmer you can even enhance it yourself! The first step is to download Astrolog. If you are using Windows, you are better off using Astrolog32, Antonió’s improved version of Astrolog, which you can download from the Official Astrolog32 Home Page. Just click on the link saying “Download Changed Astrolog”. If you are using a MAC, you’ll need to download the Original Astrolog instead, which has a version for MAC computers. The instructions are fairly clear - select the version you want (English or French), and download the files. The files are compressed - simply uncompress them (in Windows XP, create a folder called Astrolog32 and just open the compressed files and drag them out to this folder), and the program astrolog32.exe is the Astrolog program itself. Astrolog32 uses the excellent Swiss Ephemeris to do the calculations. You’ll need to download Swiss Ephemeris files too, and place this in a subdirectory called “ephemeris”. On the Astrolog32 site, you’ll find instructions on how to do this, for the default ephemeris files which will cover the years 1800-2400. If you want earlier or later centuries as well, you’ll need to download additional files (there is a link on the site to do this). When you first run Astrolog32, you’ll get a window appearing saying that the configuration file couldn’t be found, and would you like to configure Astrolog now. Answer “Yes” to this, and the following window will appear:



	Regional Preferences allows you to specify whether you would like American, European or Indian format (these affect date and time formats, and whether you’d like Vedic defaults - these can all be changed later if required). Default Location allows you to set your home location. This specifies whether daylight savings time (Summer Time) is in operation at the moment (this will need to be changed twice a year), your latitude and longitude, and time zone. There is also a downloadable atlas on the Astrolog32 site containing details of major cities. Note that the timezone should always say GMT for the United Kingdom, and Daylight Savings Time set to “Yes” if it’s currently British Summer Time, or “No” if it’s currently GMT. In Astrolog, “BST” does not mean “British Summer Time”, but a different time zone altogether - Brazilian Standard Time! Directories won’t need to be altered if you’ve already created a top-level folder on your C drive called “astrolog32”. If you’ve installed Astrolog32 somewhere else, you’ll need to specify the directories explicitly. When you click on “OK, Save Now” you are prompted to save the file in the “main” subdirectory. Just accept the default name of astrolog32.dat, and next time you load Astrolog32, you’ll get a “here and now” chart for your home location:

You can then decide which house system to use, which bodies you would like (you can use the main four asteroids and trans-Neptunian planets), which aspects, which planets to include in transits, which planets to include in progressions and various calculation settings from the Settings menu. These settings can be saved (in the astrolog32.dat file) by clicking File then Save Current Settings.

Chart data can be entered in the Edit menu.

Chart data can be saved to a file in the File menu.

To print a chart, you will want to reverse the screen so that you get a white background instead of a black background - if you fail to do this, you’ll use up all your printer ink printing the chart as it will print it out as it appears on the screen - namely, with LOTS of black ink! To do this, click on View then Reverse Background (or just press lower case x on the keyboard instead). If you have a monochrome printer, you can also click on View and Monochrome (or press m on the keyboard) to make the chart black and white. If you do print in colour, you may find yellow on white very difficult to read. I have reassigned the colours in my version of Astrolog to make yellow appear as “Orange” - though it’s more of a dirty yellow than orange. You can do this by clicking on Settings then Color Settings.

To do a comparison of two chart, you can enter information for the main chart as usual, and also enter information for “Chart number 2” using either Edit then Enter Chart #2 Data or, if the second person’s data is on file, using File and Open Chart #2. You then have a choice of the type of chart to display on the View menu - for instance, a composite chart, comparison chart and so on. One downside to Astrolog is that if you display two people’s charts (to do a comparison), although it shows both people’s planets, it only displays the full data (positions to the nearest minute) for the first person.

This has really only scratched the surface of Astrolog’s capabilities - it is a very flexible and fully featured program. Enjoy!

For further details, e-mail me at chris@bristolastrology.net or telephone me on 0117 963 6847