> Okay, third time lucky. Now that Ray has told me how to delete posts
> via Google, I have tried to clean up the line breaks in the last post
> and removed *two* previous posts.
> On Apr 21, 1:45 pm, "x...@sympatico.ca" <x...@sympatico.ca> wrote
> [AMENDED #2]:
> The following is written in ASCII maths. The general idea is that
> given any point (which rises and sets), one wants to know how far it
> is has gone its travel between the meridian and horizon, expressed as
> a proportion of the entire time of travelling between them.
> A = RAMC or sidereal time expressed as degrees
> B = geographic latitude of birthplace
> a = a planet's right ascension (in degrees for this formula)
> d = the planet's declination
> s = the sign of the planet's altitude, +1 if above the horizon, -1 if
> below
> The latter must be calculated not approximated, especially with bodies
> like the Moon or Pluto when they are near the horizon.
> Q = arccos (-tan d * (tan B))
> Then the "Placidian domitude" p of the planet, expressed from 0 to 360
> degrees, is
> p = 90*(s + 1) + (180*[ a - A + s*Q ] ) / [ 2*s*Q ]
> Note: the square brackets indicate reduction modulo 360 and this
> operation has priority: it must be done immediately following the
> operations inside the brackets and before the multiplication and
> division outside the brackets.
> The Ascendant, with ecliptic latitude 0 of course, will give p = 0;
> the second Placidian cusp will give p = 30, and so on.
> Naturally this convention follows conventional house systems which are
> numbered Zodiac-wise rather than according to diurnal motion. This
> means that planets move backwards. A planet with p = 160 is 1/3 of the
> way from beng on the curve of cusp VI to lying on the western horizon
> in terms of frozen zodiacal space; but actually it has travelled 2/3
> of the way from the horizon to cusp VI. In their diurnal movement
> planets go clockwise.
> The Gauquelins made it easier to relate numbers to physical reality by
> counting their positions clockwise. Let the Gauquelin sector position
> be g; then g = -p modulo 360.
> Whether you choose to use p or g, the advantage of reducing diurnal
> positions to a 360-degree scale is that you can have any number of
> sectors you want. If only eight, let them go from 0 to 45, 45 to 90,
> 90 to 135, and so on. If you want 18 sectors, they will go from 0 to
> 20, 20 to 40, etc.
> PS - The forumula is indeterminate in the rare case that a planet's
> altitude is exactly 0. You can easily program a fudge to determine
> whether its p should be 0 or 180.
RM: I delayed my response to this valuable post and formula to give