Glenn R. Smith's article

[Guest guest]

At 02:52 AM 9/8/04 -0000, Andrew wrote:

>I found the following link especially helpful:

>

>http://www.glenn.freehomepage.com/writings/sidereal

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Very good article! It wouldn't print, however, so I copied the text into my

mail program. The excerpt below should be interesting to western siderealists:

 

" ...The ancient Indian astronomical text, Surya-Siddhanta lists a brilliant

star CHITRA (Spica, alpha-virginis) as exactly on the 180 degree mark of

the Sidereal zodiac. Chitra is therefore located at the exact opposite of

the zero-point of the Sidereal zodiac. This is important since the

Surya-Siddhanta gives no star for the exact zero degree mark.

 

" The star Chitra becomes very significant when you understand that the

ancient Hindus used shadow sticks and reflecting pools to measure the

position of stars and planets. In order to observe solar movements

especially, one would need reference points in the starry sky ***opposite

the Sun*** for the obvious fact that no reference stars are visible during

daylight.

 

" Whenever Chitra is on the meridian of observation at local mean midnight

it is known that the Sun is in the first degree of Sidereal Aries.

Therefore the measurement of the Ayanamsha simply entails measuring the

distance between the ECLIPTIC position of Chitra and the point of the

Autumnal Equinox. For the year 1950 AD Chitra (Spica, alpha-virginis) was

listed as 203d 09m l2s Ecliptic longitude. This is the same as 23d 09m l2s

east of the Autumnal Equinox. Thus the Ayanamsha for 1950 AD is 23d 09m l2s. "

 

----------------------end of quote-------------------

 

I had never thought of the night time observation of a star marking the

opposite point to zero sidereal Aries! (The asterisks above are mine.)

 

Donald Bradley originally accepted Spica as the sidereal fiducial star. He

uses Spica in his SOLAR AND LUNAR RETURNS. I currently use the slightly

offset Krishnamurti ayanamsa because of dasa/bhukti timing and solar

ingress charts.

 

Bradley was quite right that the Spica fiducial gave poor results for

ingress charts. However, the Krishnamurti ayanamsa works extremely well,

and (as I've pointed out on this site before) it's almost exactly a degree

from the Fagan/Allen value (59 minutes plus a second or two depending on

the year).

 

Therese