The Libra Stellium

This past weekend we saw a stellium of 6 planets in LIbra.   The Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus and Jupiter were all in Libra.  Depending on the rising sign this can bring varied results in horoscopes.  On an astronomical sidenote when testing very simple astronomy algorithms the dates where the outer planets were most off were during such stelliums.

I was curious about how often these happen so I wrote a quick program to look for them from 1600-2100.  Here is a short list of the 6 or more stelliums which have occured since 1900 and will be occuring up to 2020.  Note to avoid a very long listing once it finds 6 or more planets it skips a week which usually by that time the stellium has cleared so these are approximate dates.  On February 4-5th of 1962 we even had 8 planets in Capricorn.  History buffs will recall that was a tense year which almost broke out in nuclear war in October.  Here is the listing of the start of each stellium:

Aug 08, 1907 sign: Cn pl: 6
Oct 03, 1910 sign: Vi pl: 6
Oct 28, 1910 sign: Li pl: 6
Nov 04, 1910 sign: Li pl: 6
Nov 11, 1910 sign: Li pl: 6
Mar 14, 1915 sign: Aq pl: 6
Oct 28, 1921 sign: Vi pl: 6
Oct 09, 1923 sign: Vi pl: 6
Feb 11, 1926 sign: Cp pl: 6
Jan 17, 1934 sign: Cp pl: 6
Jan 24, 1934 sign: Cp pl: 6
Apr 26, 1941 sign: Ar pl: 6
Apr 28, 1949 sign: Ar pl: 6
Oct 10, 1950 sign: Vi pl: 6
Jan 17, 1962 sign: Cp pl: 6
Jan 24, 1962 sign: Cp pl: 6
Jan 31, 1962 sign: Cp pl: 7
Feb 07, 1962 sign: Cp pl: 7
Dec 17, 1963 sign: Sg pl: 6
May 30, 1965 sign: Ta pl: 6
Aug 31, 1979 sign: Le pl: 6
Sep 07, 1979 sign: Le pl: 6
May 03, 2000 sign: Ar pl: 6
May 13, 2002 sign: Ta pl: 6
Oct 22, 2006 sign: Li pl: 6
May 22, 2012 sign: Ta pl: 6
Dec 26, 2019 sign: Sg pl: 6

Windows Mobile Pocket PC vs Smartphone

I often get inquiries about certain models of cell phones which use Windows Mobile and Jyotish Tools for the Pocket PC.   Microsoft has two versions of Windows Mobile or what was originally called the Pocket PC OS.  With Pocket PC 2003 they split it into two versions, one for the Pocket PC PDAs such as the Compaq or HP iPAQ and a slimmed down version for Smartphones.  The Smartphone version had more security built into it so developers couldn't just recompile their appications for the Smartphone, they had to be rewritten.   Since the Jyotish market is rather small it didn't make sense to put in the work to produce a Smartphone version.   However nowadays there are cellphones which come with the Pocket PC version of Windows Mobile such as the Cingular 8125.  On these phones Jyotish Tools for the Pocket PC will work so check which version of Windows Mobile the phone you have or plan to buy uses if you want to have Jyotish Tools on your cell phone.  Remember you can also try the demo to see if it works on the phone.

Linux and FLTK 2.0

I am about finished with a version of Quick Jyotish using the Fast Light Tool Kit 2.0 instead of wxWidgets.  The nice thing about this library is that it is much more compatible than wxWidgets.  In fact it doesn't require the installation of any dependent libraries.  So far I have been able to run it on Ubuntu, Mandriva and SUSE 10.  The downside is that FLTK at this moment does not have support for printing.  They are working on that problem as printing tends to be a platform dependant situation and bloats the library.   I also plan this time to release a Windows version (may even run on Windows 95) and maybe even OS X on the Mac.  If the FLTK library can be successfully ported to Windows Mobile there may be a Pocket PC version and when Palm releases it's Linux OS a it should be possible to make a Palm OS version available.