Fixed Stars in My Birth Chart

A contact in an astrological chart is defined by a comparison rule and an allowed distance, or orb. Check those settings before interpreting a match. NatalChart.AI calculates the positions of 69 named stars for the birth date, compares each with the 17 natal bodies and lists every pair closer than 1.5° in ecliptic longitude. The list appears in the Astro data section of the chart with the position and house of each star.

What a useful contact list shows

• The star’s name and the catalogue used.
• The planet, angle or other supported factor being compared.
• The calculated separation and the allowed orb.
• The coordinate rule used to define a contact.
• Any birth-time uncertainty affecting the result.

A conjunction measured in ecliptic longitude is not the same as a small full angular distance between two points in the sky. Name the rule actually being used.

A worked example

With those settings the demonstration chart has 11 contacts, tightest first:

Demonstration birth: 1991-09-06 at 18:30 local time, Kyiv, Ukraine (50.4501° N, 30.5234° E), Europe/Kyiv at UTC+3, so 1991-09-06 15:30 UTC. Tropical zodiac, Placidus houses, Swiss Ephemeris 2.10.03. Full result and settings on How to verify your birth chart.

The closest contact is Kochab with Vesta at 0.28°. Regulus, one of the stars most often cited in astrological writing, meets Jupiter at 0.91°. A star can appear twice when two bodies sit near it, and one body can meet two stars; each pair is listed on its own so that the orb of every match is visible.

Read the calculation before the symbolism

A narrower orb and a wider orb can produce different lists. The threshold should be published and applied consistently; here it is 1.5° for every star and every body.

A traditional interpretation is a separate layer. It should be identified as astrological lore, not as a demonstrated effect of a star on a person. NatalChart.AI shows each contacted star with its position and house and does not attach a traditional meaning to it automatically; what a contact is taken to mean is a question for the reading, and it should be read as symbolism.

When time matters

Contacts involving the Ascendant or Midheaven would depend strongly on the birth time. NatalChart.AI does not compare stars with the angles, so the contact list does not change through them; the house shown beside each star does, because the house cusps move with the time and place.

Among the bodies, the Moon is the sensitive one. It moves up to about 15° a day (14.60°/day in the demonstration chart), so it stays within 1.5° of any one star for only about 4.9 hours. Here the Moon meets Merak at 0.29°; at its speed at birth that contact holds from about 2.0 hours before the recorded time to about 2.9 hours after it, and a birth outside that window on the same date would not show it. The other bodies move far less than 1.5° in a day, so their contacts are settled by the date alone.

“Fixed” does not mean that a star’s zodiac position can be taken from an undated table and used unchanged for every birth date. Because of precession the ecliptic longitude of every star increases slowly, so the positions here are calculated for the birth date rather than read from a table. The full demonstration result is on How to verify your birth chart.

Questions

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