DocsTiming ToolsGraphic Ephemeris
Timing Tools

Graphic Ephemeris

The Time Map: transiting bodies plotted as moving lines across years, folded around a chosen modulus to reveal exact aspect crossings, with full scrub-and-play timeline controls.

8 min read Updated 14 August 2026 Pro

The Graphic Ephemeris — AstroWatch calls it the Time Map — plots transiting bodies' longitude as moving lines across a span of years, folds that motion around a chosen modulus to reveal exact aspect crossings, and lets you scrub or play through the whole window like a timeline.

Opening it

Tools → Graphic Ephemeris… — a Pro feature. Unlike the Aspect Calendar, it needs an active profile with a natal chart already loaded; it does nothing if you open it before one is. Its default comparison mode is Transit → Natal when a chart is loaded (or Transit → Transit if not), and it starts anchored on whatever moment the Dashboard or Expanded Chart View's transit timeline is currently parked on.

Menu click does nothing? Load a profile first — unlike the Aspect Calendar, Graphic Ephemeris has no transit-only fallback and silently declines to open without an active natal chart.

The same three comparison modes

Tr→Tr, Tr→Na and Pr→Na work exactly as they do in the Aspect Calendar — transiting bodies measured against either a snapshot of the sky at the moment you opened the dialog (Tr→Tr) or your real natal points, plain or secondary-progressed (Tr→Na / Pr→Na). Switching modes swaps the horizontal reference lines the moving bodies are measured against.

Reading the graph

Each visible body draws as a coloured line tracking its longitude across the loaded date range; the horizontal reference lines are the natal (or snapshot) points from the active comparison mode. A small ring marks every point where a moving line crosses a reference line exactly — an aspect perfecting. The side panel lists every visible body's live sign and degree at the "now" line, its retrograde state, and any natal aspects currently within 3° of exact.

The Graphic Ephemeris Time Map, five planet tracks crossing horizontal natal reference lines over a 2026-2030 window, with rings marking exact crossings, a vertical now-line, a side readout panel, and a pressure track along the bottom. 1 2 3
  1. 1Now-line — the vertical marker at the loaded date; a ring appears wherever a track crosses a natal reference line exactly.
  2. 2Side readout — every visible body's live sign/degree, plus a Natal Aspects list for anything within orb.
  3. 3Pressure track — a rolled-up density curve of how many crossings are active at each point in the window.

Folding the modulus

The Modulus selector — 360°, 180°, 90° or 45° — controls how the circle folds. At 360° you see the raw longitude; folding to 180° collapses conjunctions and oppositions onto the same line, 90° adds squares, and 45° folds in semi-squares and sesquisquares too — each step reveals more of the hard-aspect family at once, at the cost of no longer telling apart which harmonic produced a given crossing without checking its exact angle. Changing the modulus animates ("morphs") the fold rather than jump-cutting it.

Scrubbing and playback

The View selector switches between Fixed-center (the "now" line stays parked in the middle and the sky scrolls under it as you drag or play) and Free-scroll (drag anywhere across the full loaded range). You can also drag directly on the graph to scrub. The transport bar has Play/Pause, step back/forward, jump to the start or end of the loaded range, a Stop button that returns to the moment the dialog was opened on, and a speed toggle cycling 1× → 2× → 4× → 8×.

The Time Map scrubbed to a later date, with the now-line readout panel showing live sign/degree positions and a Natal Aspects list of rows within orb, each with a coloured progress bar.

Scrubbed forward a year — the now-line readout updates live as you drag, play, or step through the loaded range.

Choosing bodies and the date range

The same 12-body glyph-chip toggle as the Aspect Calendar (Sun through Pluto plus Chiron and the North Node) controls which tracks are drawn — Jupiter through Pluto are visible by default, the same slow-mover default the Aspect Calendar opens with. Start Year and End Year boxes set the loaded window; the graph re-samples the ephemeris whenever you widen or narrow it.

What's next

That covers both timing tools — the Aspect Calendar for a searchable list of exact contacts, the Time Map for a continuous, scrubbable picture of the same kind of activity across years. From here, the docs move on to reading the composed interpretation itself: the on-screen Written Reports dialog and the designed PDF report book you can export from a profile.

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