No single technique decides a forecast. AstroWatch rates every day from everything that happens in it, builds weeks and months from those days, years from their months, and then adds the techniques that belong to each period: lunations, the Lunar Return, the Solar Return, progressions and eclipses. The rules below are the ones the app uses; they follow classical principles (conjunctions count most, Jupiter protects, strong placements on the angles lift a chart) and are applied the same way to every chart.
The three tones
| Shown as | Colour | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Lucky | Teal | The supportive influences clearly outweigh the testing ones. |
| Easy | Lavender | Balanced: supportive and testing influences roughly cancel out, or nothing strong is happening. |
| Challenging | Red | The testing influences clearly outweigh the supportive ones. |
Internally every factor is scored on a scale from −1 (fully testing) to +1 (fully supportive). A period is Lucky when its score reaches about +0.25, Challenging at about −0.25, and Easy in between (the totals of whole periods use ±0.3, see Adding it all up).
What a "day" is
An astrological day runs from sunrise to the next sunrise at the dashboard's location, not from midnight. Before sunrise, the Today card still shows the previous day. The Forecast screen says which sunrise times it used, for example "This day runs from sunrise (06:29) to the next sunrise (06:30) in Islamabad". Near the poles, where the Sun may not rise or set, the day falls back to midnight to midnight.
Rating a day
Everything that falls inside the day is collected and scored:
- The Moon's contacts with your birth planets (the Moon is part of every method).
- The planets' exact contacts with your birth chart that day: the Sun to Pluto meeting, supporting or testing your natal planets.
- Sky events: planets changing sign, turning retrograde or direct, New and Full Moons and eclipses (in your houses when a profile is open).
- Slow transits still in orb: Jupiter to Pluto within 1.5° of an aspect to a natal planet at midday count at half weight, because they colour many days in a row.
- Jupiter's protection and Grand Trines (see below).
How much each contact weighs
| Aspect | Weight | Tone |
|---|---|---|
| Conjunction | 3 | By the planet's nature: Jupiter and Venus help; Saturn and Mars test; others follow their own meaning. |
| Opposition | 2 | Usually testing |
| Square | 1.5 | Testing |
| Trine | 1.5 | Supportive |
| Sextile | 1 | Supportive |
A contact is also weighted by the strength of the moving planet (slow planets weigh more than fast ones), and a contact that falls in an angular house (1st, 4th, 7th or 10th) counts a fifth more.
Protections and lifts
- Jupiter's shield. When Jupiter meets your natal Sun, Moon or Venus, the period can never be Challenging: at worst it is Easy (balanced).
- Grand Trine. A Grand Trine of strong planets (the Sun, Moon, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn) formed between the sky and your birth chart lifts a Challenging rating to Easy, unless Saturn and Mars make three or more hard contacts.
- Jupiter over your 1st or 10th house adds a small supportive lift.
- Many afflictions win. Lifts never hide a genuinely difficult picture: when Saturn and Mars make several hard contacts (conjunctions, squares, oppositions), the lift is withheld.
Returns and progressions
The Solar Return (your birthday chart), the Lunar Return (the Moon's monthly return to its birth place) and your progressed chart are rated with the same contacts, plus the placements classical astrology treats as strong:
| Placement | Effect |
|---|---|
| Sun, Moon or Jupiter within 6° of the return chart's Ascendant or MC | Lifts the return |
| Solar Return Ascendant on your natal MC, or its MC on your natal Ascendant (within 5°) | Lifts the year |
| Jupiter or Venus in an angular house of the return | Small lift |
| A Grand Trine of strong planets in the return chart | Softens a hard return |
| Progressed Sun, Moon or Jupiter within 1° of your natal Ascendant or MC | Lifts the period |
A lift turns a Challenging chart into Easy (balanced) when there are fewer than four hard Saturn/Mars contacts, and an Easy chart into Lucky when there are fewer than two.
Weeks, months, years and cycles
Longer periods are built from the bottom up:
- Week and month: from the count of Lucky, Easy and Challenging days. A month is Challenging only when at least 40% of its days are Challenging and they outnumber the Lucky days, so seven hard days in a month do not make a hard month. Lucky works the same way.
- Year: from its twelve months, counted the same way.
- Current cycles: from their years.
Adding it all up
The period's final tone is a weighted grand total of every method that belongs to it. Each part is scored from −1 to +1; the total is Lucky at +0.3 or more, Challenging at −0.3 or less, and Easy in between. Jupiter's shield still applies to the total.
| Period | Parts and their weights |
|---|---|
| Today | The day's own rating (everything in the day, above) |
| This Week | Days 85% · New / Full Moons 15% |
| This Month | Days 70% · Lunar Return 20% · New / Full Moons 10% |
| This Year | Months 50% · Solar Return 20% · Progressions 20% · Eclipses 10% |
| This Year, no profile | Months 85% · Eclipses 15% |
| Current Cycles | Years 70% · Progressions 30% |
With a profile, the year follows your Solar Return: it runs from one birthday chart to the next.
Life areas in focus
Every reading AstroWatch knows belongs to one of twelve life areas (self, money, communication, home, creativity, work, relationships, intimacy, learning, career, community and inner life). The three areas with the most weight in the period are shown as "In focus", and the strongest one chooses the period's headline.
Where the words come from
- Moments and summaries are written from AstroWatch's own interpretation library (the same one behind the PDF reports), condensed into short, plain sentences, with the technical detail shown as glyphs and explained when you hover.
- The summary lists the period's readings strongest first, with the dates on which each one peaks, and ends with the advice of the strongest reading.
- The Moon of the day comes from the Moon's sign and phase.
- All texts are available in the app's nine interface languages.
Without a profile: the sky for everyone
With no profile open, or with the World side of the Personal / World switch selected, the forecast reads the sky by the rules of mundane astrology instead of a birth chart:
- The tone comes from the sky's own aspects: the Moon with every planet, and the planets with each other. Trines and sextiles support, squares and oppositions test, and conjunctions follow the planets' nature.
- The headline follows the period's main sky theme, chosen from its strongest event: a New Moon or solar eclipse (beginnings), a Full Moon or lunar eclipse (climax), or the slowest planet involved (Mercury talk and trade, Venus love and values, Mars drive, Jupiter growth, Saturn structure, Uranus change, Neptune dreams, Pluto power, Chiron healing).
- Today is described from the Moon's sign and phase, the day's sky events, the strongest planetary contacts and the slow planets' signs.
- Week, month and year are read in three paragraphs: the dated turning points (lunations, eclipses, stations, sign changes), the main contacts between the planets, and the slow background (retrograde planets and the generation planets' signs).
What's next
The same chart engine draws every wheel in the app. To compare wheels side by side, see Wheel, North, South & East styles →