Planetary Calculation Engine
Timaeus uses the Swiss Ephemeris planetary calculation engine. While the Swiss Ephemeris calculates planet positions, horizon and meridian angles and covers a range of 10,800 years spanning the dates Jan 2, 5401 BCE - Dec 31, 5399 CE, I had to truncate the date range a bit in Timaeus in order to remain compatible with my CMDateTime component. As a result, the earliest date that can be calculated is Jan 1, -4712 (4713 BCE), whereas the upper range of the date matches that of the Swiss Ephemeris. I plan to rectify this in my component in a future version which for now covers a date range of about 10,110 years.
It is important to set the path to the Swiss Ephemeris correctly in the main program options. If the Swiss Ephemeris is not found by Timaeus, then the calculations are done by the Moshier ephemeris with a time range between 3,000 BCE - 3,000 CE. The demo version of Timaeus uses the Moshier ephemeris. If you do buy the registered version of Timaeus, make sure that you set the path to the Swiss Ephemeris correctly in your main settings.
Font used in Timaeus
Kenneth Hirst originally developed the "Astro" font back in 1993. Ken "fontified" the drawings of the glyphs that I made for the lots of fortune, spirit and exaltation and basis, and added several standard characters that were not in his original font. This "Astro" font is proprietary.
Astrology Font Copyright 1993, Cosmorama Enterprises, P.O. Box 5362, Irvine, California 92716. All rights reserved. Licensed to Curtis Manwaring by Kenneth Hirst.
Accuracy of Planetary Hours
Timaeus uses the low accuracy formula for calculation of the Sun's position for planetary hour purposes using my own formula (not the Swiss Ephemeris). This means that in order to derive the true anomaly, Keplers "equation of center" was used rather than the longer and more complicated mathematical calculations that would be needed to find a more accurate true anomaly. For determining the beginning and ending times of planetary hours, this is fine and only changes the time of sunrise and sunset by a few seconds on any given day.
Please note that the apparent sunset is not used but rather the true sunset position. Atmospheric refraction causes the Sun to appear to set later and rise earlier than the stated time in Timaeus. What you see on The Weather Channel and other weather reports is the time of apparent sunrise and sunset. There is also the difference in definition in when sunset occurs. The definition used by most weather agencies is based on the whole of the Sun's disk disappearing below the observers horizon. Astrologers use the center of the Sun's disk. Since the Sun is half a degree in diameter, and there is approximately 4 minutes in time per degree this is a difference of 1 minute between the 2 definitions. Atmospheric refraction accounts for about 4 minutes (1 degree). In version 4, the planetary hour start and end times should be accurate to within 20 seconds according to astrological definitions of sunrise/sunset.
