orbital astrology

7/27/2019 Orbital Astrology

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Born in 1962 and I have been anastrological counsellor to individuals,couples and businesses for almost thirty

years. After experimenting different schoolsof Astrology, ten years ago I resolved to joinCiro Discepolo's astrological method andschool, named Active Astrology -- based onthe active relocation of the Solar Returns(Mr. Discepolo calls them: Aimed SolarReturns or Aimed Birthdays) and theexorcism of the symbols, as originallyconceived by Swiss psychiatrist CarlGustav Jung. I am the founder and currentmoderator of the newsgroup of astrologicaldiscussion and information in Italianlanguage it.discussioni.astrologia.

Websitehttp://digilander.libero.it/drusetta/Bloghttp://lucianodrusetta.blogspot.com/

Orbital AstrologybyLuciano Drusetta, Italy

Translated And Partially Rewritten intoEnglish by the AuthorReviewed & Proofing by: Pamela JablonskiU.S.A.

Originally published on Ricerca 90, issue55/2003

ome of the readers may know mydissertation on the ExtraterrestrialAstrology, originally published on

the Italian magazine Ricerca 90, issues 44to 47, and also available on SaptarishisAstrology Website. In brief, theExtraterrestrial Astrology is an attempt ofexporting our daily astrology activity intoouter space in order to be able to assess, at

an astrological level, all the events thatmay happen anywhere other than on ourplanet Earth: such as births (natal charts),birthdays (Solar Returns) but also LunarReturns, transits and any otherastrologically detectable event thatastrologers may deal with. This meansliterally anywhere: in orbit around theEarth, on the Moon, on Mars, or even anyother place in the Universe.

One of the most frequent criticisms to myExtraterrestrial Astrology is that it mayrepresent a nice intellectual exercise oftheoretical astrology, while is of virtuallyno practical use. Indeed, thinking of ahuman birth in space does not appearrealistic. But if such event I have toadmit it is not just around the corner,several people have already spent a

birthday in the space. Hence myExtraterrestrial Astrology may havealready found its practical application inthe study of Solar Returns. Dont you

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believe me? Let us consider a few facts taken from the German website www.spacefacts.de.

This site, also available in English, gives you the full list of the astronauts, cosmonauts,trikonauts and space tourists from the very beginning of the space adventure until our days.Strictly speaking, with the word astronauts we usually refer to the U.S. astronauts, or tothose people of other nationalities who have flown with US space agency NASA. The word

cosmonauts refers to Soviet or Russian astronauts or to astronauts of any other nationalitywho have flown with the Soviet space agency I mean, the agency of formerly SovietUnion, presently Russian space agency. Trikonauts are the Chinese astronauts, while all theothers are usually referred to as space travellers or space tourists. Here I will use the termastronaut in the broadest sense of the term, referring to all the people who have ever flownin the space.

In early 2003, shortly before the tragedy of the space shuttle Columbia, destroyed over Texasduring re-entry, the site Spacefacts listed more than 400 people who had flown in space untilthen. The number of effective astronauts is actually much higher, but most of them are still

in waiting list for the first flight, while others used to work as an astronaut but have nevergone to space. To make a long story short, since Yuri Gagarin more than 400 people havegone to the space as an astronaut or as a tourist. Of each of them, the website Spacefactsgives: the place and date of their birth (alas, without the time!), the dates of their missions inspace, and some biographical notes. Based on this information, we can get to know howmany of them, and which ones, have ever celebrated a birthday in space.

Some of you may argue that without the time of birth it is impossible to determine the exacttime of a Solar Return. This is true, but it is also true that the SR always takes place withinthe three days around the civil birthday: it can only be on the very day of the birthday, orthe day before, or the day after. Following this simple rule, and based on the informationgiven by the website Spacefacts, anyone can find out how many people have actually had aSR in space.

The result surprised even me: as for early 2003 44 people had certainly had a Solar Return inspace. It is not a negligible number: it is more than 10% of the total number of astronauts. Afurther 11 astronauts may have had, but not certainly had a SR in space. This obviouslydepends on their time of birth and on the detailed schedule of their space missions. I meanthat some of those eleven astronauts were just taking off or they were just re-entering fromorbit on the very day of their civil birthday. Therefore these 11 cases require furtherinvestigation.

In any case, this is 44 + 11 = 55 interesting astrological cases; some ofthem were dramatic, and

I think that it would be worth to study them in depth. Among these 11cases perhaps the most outstanding and sad storyis that of Viktor Ivanovich Patsayev [Fig. 1, left],who died in 1971 during the re-entry of the Soyuz11 immediately after his SR in space1. Patsayevand two fellow cosmonauts had been sent to

spend some time in the orbiting station Salyut,which would become part of the famous orbitingstation MIR. Probably due to a loss of pressurization in the re-entrymodule, the three cosmonauts perished a dramatic event, although


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not so striking as the accidents to the two ill-fated shuttles Challenger and Columbia.Incidentally, none of the members of the crew of the two tragic missions Challenger andColumbia had spent their SR in space.

A birthday in orbit is not necessarily a fatal experience: this is confirmed by the lessdramatic, yet still significant case of Charles "Pete" Conrad [Fig. 2, lower right on the

previous page], a veteran of space flights since the days of the first Gemini missions

2.Together with two fellow astronauts, Conrad formed the first crew of Skylab which had

been orbiting for a time, empty, waiting for the first men to arrive and occupy it. There wereno technical problems whatsoever, either during the mission or during the re-entry, but theastrologically interesting fact was that Pete Conrad, after spending his SR in space, leftNASA at the height of his career and moved to Colorado to take over a prestigiousgovernment charge.

The study of these and other specific cases of Orbital Astrology involves certainverifications that are quite difficult to solve. So for the time being what I can do is simply

introducing to you some technical issues related to the calculation of a SR in space andproposing you one example to study, even though unluckily it can only be a hypotheticalcase.

THE QUESTION OF THE HORIZONs you may recall, one of the basic principles of the Extraterrestrial and not only theExtraterrestrial Astrology is that the House system of our charts must be castconsidering the place where the subject stands in that moment. This is an obvious

concept, but it must be repeated because it is taken for granted in the case of a natal chart,while not all the astrologers accept that the chart of a SR be cast considering the place where

the subject is in that moment. In the context we are dealing with now this is a fundamentalconcept, so that if one does not stick to this rule, all the reasoning that follows becomesnonsense.

Now, following the afore mentioned principle some people suggested that when the subjectis in orbit around the Earth, the centre of the astrological chart (normally occupied by ourplanet Earth) should be occupied by the spacecraft or by the orbiting base, and that theHouse system should be calculated based on a horizon that runs through the orbitingvehicle. I would immediately discharge this hypothesis, because it would involve a task verydifficult to solve: we should build up and point out, on such a small and manoeuvrable

heavenly body as the space shuttle or the orbiting base, a logical system of actualgeographical coordinates in miniature. We should establish an axis of rotation of the vehicle,two poles, a horizon, and to make a long story short, if you wish you can try it but I preferto deal with other possibilities.

In fact, when drawing the Houses in our charts, we do not take in consideration thesubjective horizon3. When you were born and we cast your natal chart, we do not carewhether you were delivered upside down with your head down and your belly in the air; andwhen you have your Solar Return, we do not care if at that time you are doing yoga or if youare scuba-diving or somersaulting under water: in any case we draw the line ASC-DSC

horizontally with the MC up and the IC down. For what we consider to be above, i.e. thedaytime hemisphere, the top of the chart, is not what is physically above the subjects head.The top of an astrological chart is that portion of the sky that is above the horizon line:namely, the line that in our charts goes from the Ascendant to the Descendant. If the subject

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lies upside down the parameters of the question do not change. If you have Mars at the MC,you keep having Mars there even if you bury your head in the sand like an ostrich. By doingso, your Mars does not end up in the Imum Coeli! Similarly, no matter if the space shuttleactually flies in orbit upside down and its crew has the Earth above their heads. And it doesnot matter if a future orbiting base would be rotating regularly around its axis to createartificial gravity: from the astrological and astronomical point of view, the horizon that we

use for the House system will be the same we are going to define it in the followingsections.

I am assuming that in the case of people or objects in orbit around the Earth, the Housesystem always refers to the geographical coordinates of the place over flown at that time.Starting from that place you will have to calculate the horizon which is the base to all theHouse systems. I will consider two possibilities now: the first is that we take inconsideration the height factor; the second is that the height or altitude can be safelyignored.

HOW HORIZON CHANGES WITH THE ELEVATIONhe most common definition of Ascendant is: the sign that we can see rising at theEastern horizon at a given time. Do you all agree? If you agree with this definition,you implicitly understand that the calculations of the Houses use the visible horizon

or the geometric horizon. There is a slight difference between the two. The visible horizon isa little bit wider than the geometrical one: due to atmospheric refraction phenomena we canactually see up to a little farther distance than what the simple geometric calculations wouldallow us to see. However in this article Ill consider these two types of horizon as perfectlyidentical.

So let us define the visible horizon [Fig. 3, below] as the circle that serves as the basis of acone whose apex is the observer. The radius R of this circle indicates the maximum distancethat we can actually see (not considering the already mentioned refractive phenomena) andit grows with the height at which the observer stands, according to the following formula(an approximate but effective one):

R = 3,570 multiplied for the square root of Hwhere H is the height in meters.

According to this formula, an average man(say, six feet tall) under normal conditions,at sea level can see at a distance of 3,570meters multiplied by the square root of 180

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cm, which is equal to 1.34 cm. So he sees up to a distance of 3,570 x 1.34 = 4,783.80 m. At aheight of 4 meters we can see little more than 7 km. At a height of 100 meters [Fig. 4,previous page, right] we can see within a radius of 35.5 km. In the mountains, at an altitudeof a thousand meters, we can see until a distance of about 113 km. From a plane flying at acruise altitude of 10,000 feet we can see things in a radius of about 357 km. Manned orbitalvehicles are positioned normally on low orbits at a distance varying from 100 to 400 km from

the surface. At a distance of 200 km from the surface, the visible horizon covers up to 1,600km.

But as you know, the matter is complicatedby the fact that the Earth is not flat. As wemove away from its surface, we realize thatwe are on a sphere, and as we fly farther offin to the outer space we can see it becomesmaller and smaller. On the ground we havethe impression that we are on a plate that

covers exactly half of the sky: 180 of 360 ofthe celestial vault. Starting from a certainheight, we realize that we are actually over aconvex plane covering less than 180. Thefollowing formula helps us quantify thisprogressive deformation of the visiblehorizon: [Fig. 5, left]

D = R / sin x

where D is the distance of the watcher fromthe centre of the Earth; R is the averageradius of the Earth (let us assume that it isequal to 6,400 km); and x is half the visualangle, also equal to half the apparent size ofthe Earth as seen from a given distance.Now, this formula takes the distances fromthe surface of the Earth, not from its centre.But this is not a problem, because we cansimply subtract R from D and we get the

data we are seeking for.4Now letusconsidersomepractical

examples of how a horoscopic chart could get deformed

if the Ascendant-Descendant line were to follow thedeformation of the visual horizon at various heights. Letus begin from a chart normally subdivided in Houses atany location at ground [Fig. 6, right]: in this situation


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the horizon covers exactly half of the sky = 180 of thechart.

At a height of 500 km the horizon appears to bestrongly curved, as to cover only 150. So in ourhypothetical natal chart subdivided in Houses at such

elevation [Fig. 7, left] the line ASC-DSC will also becurved and it would split the chart into unequalhalves: the lower one (night) of 150 and the higherone (daytime) of 210. As the logical consequence ofthe curvature of the line Ascendant-Descendant, theDescendant point (i.e. the cusp of the Seventh House)is no longer diametrically opposite the Ascendantpoint (i.e. the cusp of the First House). In the specificcase of the chart drawn in Fig. 7, the Ascendant at

approximately 20 Aries corresponds to the Descendant at approximately 20 Virgo.

Please note that the deformation does not affect the line MC-IC, which I neglected to drawin these charts. I did so for the sake of clarity, but also to draw the readers attention on theline ASC-DSC.

From a distance of 1,000 kilometres from its surface, the Earth appears as a sphere of 120 indiameter, and it would cover only four signs of theZodiac, while the upper half of our chart would extend of240 long degrees [Fig. 8, right]. The example proposedhere shows an Ascendant falling somewhere in betweenAries and Taurus, while the Descendant falls somewherein between Virgo and Leo.

This is a critical distance, because beyond the distance of1,000 km the line ASC-DSC, which in effect representsour planet Earth in our astrological charts, no longertouches the centre of the chart. In other words, it isbeginning from this distance that we can start talkingabout real, effective Extraterrestrial Astrology. Unlessyou represent our bent horizon by drawing a parabolainstead of a circular arc: only in this way the ASC-DSC line, despite being stronglydeformed, could continue to tap the centre of the chart.


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Let us boldly go further and farther. From a distance of2,600 km [Fig. 9, upper left], the Earth occupies 90 degreesof the sky and it covers only three zodiacal signs. At adistance equal to the mean radius of Earth (6,400 km) theEarth covers 60 [Fig. 10, below], while at a distance of18,300 kilometres [Fig. 11,

lower left] it appears as asphere of 30. Also thedistance of 18,300kilometres from Earthssurface is a critical

distance, because onlystarting from this distancewe can see the Earth(although for very short

periods) somehowincluded in one zodiacsign, thus becoming (at least in my opinion) a celestialbody just like any other in the sky i.e. yet anotherelement of our charts, an element which can be read justlike any other, a planet to which the future astrologicaltradition would assign an interpretation of its own.

As seen from the Moon, at about 384,000 kilometres fromhere, the Earth is reduced to an apparent magnitude of only 2 degrees [Fig. 12, below]. Let me

stress that, as seen from the Earth, the Moon and the Sun both have an apparent size of halfa degree. This would offer the opportunity to argue about thereal accuracy and reliability of the ephemerides telling us theposition of the Luminaries with a precision reaching theminutes or the seconds of arc but this would lead us farfrom the scope of this research of Orbital Astrology. Illcome back to this subject another day instead.

The linear length of the Earth as seen from the Moon isonly four times greater than the linear length of the Moon

as seen from the Earth5. Do not let this mislead you.Remember that we are talking of a circle in the celestial

vault, so the Earth is actually much greater, seen from thelunar surface: a quick mental calculation led me to reckon that it should appear at least 12 to16 times larger than the Moon as we can see it from the Earth! In other words, if we were onthe Moon we would probably see a huge Earth actually. At least it would be enormous for usearthlings, accustomed as we are at our Moon measuring half a degree and even so,sometimes, our Moon does appear very big indeed, especially if its close to the horizon or ifit appears to us against a reference point such as a building, a tower, or a tree.


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8IGNORING THE HEIGHT FACTORfter having wowed you by the special effects of science fiction, I invite you toreflect: are you really sure that the line ASC-DSC becomes deformed with theheight? To answer this question we must first revise the definition that we had

given of the Ascendant as the sign that we actually can see rising on the Eastern horizon

at a given moment. Is it really so? Do we astrologers, in our House system, really considerthe visible horizon? Here is the answer...

At the height at which manned space missions usually orbit (as we said, it is usuallybetween 100 and 400 km from Earth surface), the deformation of the visible horizon therefore the possible deformation of the 12 Houses is reduced to a bare minimum, at leastif compared to the striking examples that I have showed you so far, relevant to much fartherdistances. Since all the work of the astrologer is balanced between accuracy and precision(another intriguing topic that someday I would like to boldly elaborate in my articles), it ismy opinion that in this case we are allowed to approximate, thus ignoring any possible

deformation of the Houses.There is another reason that makes me lean towards the total irrelevancy of the height factorwhile drawing the Houses for a chart in orbit. Ill tell you right now. First let me remind youthat besides the visible horizon and the geometric horizon (that so far Ive considered to beperfectly overlapping here just for convenience), there are two other types of horizon. Thefirst one is the astronomical horizon, defined as the plane parallel to the geometrical horizon

and tangent to the watchers place of station. It is my beliefthat when we astrologers cast and draw our Houses in thechart, we actually consider yet another kind of horizon: therational one, defined as the plane parallel to both thegeometric and the astronomical horizon, and passingthrough the Earths centre [Fig. 13, left shows these threehorizons in two dimensions, while Fig. 14 below tries torepresent them in 3D]. It is also my opinion that luckily forus, the rational horizon which is the fundamental buildingblock for the construction of our line ASC-DSC does notdeform with the height. On the other hand, given the hugedistances that we face when we relate our Earth to the

celestial vault, we can safely consider that our planet Earth is a simple non-dimensional

point in the very centre of the vault. As a consequence,the rational horizon can be safely considered asperfectly coincident with the astronomical horizon.

This is why I believe that a SR in orbit should besubdivided into the 12 Houses based on the coordinatesof the place over-flown by the spacecraft at that time,leaving out the factor altitude. This place is called subsatellite point. For in space, when everything is relatedto the celestial vault and to the Zodiac, the distances

vanish and I am sure that 100 km more or less do notmake any difference between an object lying on the ground and an object flying on thevertical of the same place. This is my humble, personal opinion. Obviously the last wordwill be the word of the first astrologers who are able to study a real case of SR in orbit, and

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to compare two charts drawn according to the two different criteria: one considering, and theother one ignoring the height factor.

SATELLITE BUSTINGet us try and calculate, as a mere didactical exercise, the SR of Italian Prime Minister

Silvio Berlusconi, fancying that in a fit of megalomania he decided to visit theInternational Space Station just before his birthday of 2003. Are you wondering why

bother to fantasize about Mr. Berlusconi in orbit when we have at least 44 real cases of SolarReturns in space to study? Ill tell you right now, in connection with the two most strikingcases of SR in space. While in Patsayevs case we do not know his time of birth, the time ofbirth of Pete Conrad is known but this is no good because we are not able to determineexactly the Skylab position at the time of Conrads Solar Return. With Silvio Berlusconi,the task is much easier to solve. First, we do know his time of birth and therefore we cansafely say that his SR of 2003 occurred at 10:21 GMT of the 29 th of September. What is left is

to get to know where the space base was flying in that exact moment and at what altitude (ifwe also want to consider the possible deformation of theline ASC-DSC).

No problem these and other pieces of information areprovided by excellent software packages, called satellitebusters6, especially developed for those amateurs wholove to go hunting artificial satellites to watch themwith a telescope or binoculars. Most of this software canbe downloaded free from the Internet in a demo orshareware version. They are light executables that canbe installed in any computer. They read the orbital datafrom text files with .TLE extension and return on yourcomputer screen the exact location of the satellite youare looking for at the time that you want7. They also

provide a number of interesting data, including the sub satellite point, which is precisely theelement that we need to cast our charts, explicitly the geographical coordinates (latitude andlongitude) of the place over which the satellite flies atthat time. They also give the height of the object fromthe ground, for those who want to play with the

deformation of the Houses.However, the satellite buster software programs havesignificant limitations. The files containing the orbitaldata must be updated constantly; if we use non-recentdata we may get some nice surprises. For example, inearly 2003 I installed one of these software programs toknow where the International Space Station (ISS)would be in September, during Mr. Berlusconisbirthday and the answer was... that it would have

already fallen on Earth! This is because, obviously, theartificial satellites do not stay in orbit forever. In orderto keep them in space without letting them fall down onto our heads, their pilots or controllers give them a

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helping hand from time to time. Later on that year, fed with more recent data, the samesoftware told me that if Mr. Berlusconi had been on board the ISS, he would have spent hisSolar Return at approximately 360 km above the point of longitude 134 E and latitude 52 N.This would have been his SR then. I leave the analysis of its reading to you [Fig. 15 upperleft on the previous page shows his natal chart, Fig. 16 lower right on the previous page is hischart of SR at ground, Fig. 17 below left shows the same chart at the height of 360 km].

CONCLUSIONSNow back to reality, namely to those 44 sure cases plusthose 11 probable cases of SR in space, which I havementioned at the beginning of this article. As I told you,we do know the time of birth of Pete Conrad thereforewe could calculate the exact time of his SR in orbit.Unluckily there is another hindrance yet. It is not

possible to trace the exact position of the Skylab at thattime, because the data files containing the orbitalpositions for those satellite buster" pieces of softwareonly refer to objects launched after 1980 and stillcurrently in orbit. No data available for the spaceshuttles, Skylab, Soyuz, Gemini, Apollo missions

Even the available data should be taken with care. Firstof all, TLE files usually contain official data which doesnot mean real data. Often the data contained in the

available files refer to the schedules of the intendedflight path at the time of take-off. There is no guarantee that in the end a space shuttle or thespace station really sticks to the planned routes. As for the Solar Returns on Earth someapproximation is a must; especially if you wish to relocate a SR, you can always spend a fewhours in the selected place for the relocation, thus counterbalancing possible uncertaintyabout the time of birth and the exact time of the Solar Return itself. But the objects in orbitare constantly moving, quickly flying always from West to East.

Let us open a small parenthesis of general orbital culture. Why do the satellites orbit alwayseastwards? Because at the moment of take-off, in order to achieve the required escape

velocity, the rockets take advantage of the centrifugal force produced by the naturalmovement of rotation of the Earth. In my naivet, I imagined that when a rocket rises itgoes up in a straight line, while the Earth rotates beneath. If it were so, it would move fromEast to West. Things do not really go like this: Earth works as a slingshot and when therocket lifts from the ramp and liberates from the gravitational pull, it is a bit like a stonewhen it is detached from the sling, i.e. throwing itself in the same direction that the slinggave to it initially.

For this reason there is also a precise relationship between the latitude of the launching siteand the orbital tilt, which is also influenced by unavoidable political variables to be taken

into account. First, we define an equatorial orbit having a tilt or inclination or 0 (thesatellite constantly flies over the equator) and a polar orbit having a tilt or inclination of 90(it flies over both poles, crossing the equator at a right angle). The Russian missions thatdepart from Baikonur at just over 45 N, they should follow an orbit with a tilt of 45 degrees,


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but it is not so, because shortly after take-off they must consume a great deal of fuel to reachthe latitude of 51 N because they are not allowed to fly over China. Similarly, the spaceshuttles departing from Cape Canaveral at 2830 N had to consume a lot of fuel to reach theorbit of 51 and engage the MIR.

Back to the example of Silvio Berlusconis

hypothetical SR in space, we can cast his SR in spaceonly if we do not have any doubt about his time ofbirth, therefore about the exact time of his SR,because only one minute later than 10:22 GMT thespace station would have been quite far away fromthe reckoned point. It would have been in fact overthe point of latitude 51 N and longitude 140 E. Thiswould have led to significant differences in the chartof the SR [Fig. 18 left: chart at ground level, Fig. 19below right: same chart at height]. Not to mention

that also the altitude of the space missions changesconstantly. As a consequence, dealing with OrbitalAstrology requires much greater precision (or said inother words, it allows a much smaller tolerance) thanthe earthly Astrology of everyday life earthly notonly because it is a geocentric astrology, but also

because it is cast, reckoned, drawn and read at ground level.

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In this article I presented some of the issues related to thestudy of Solar Returns in space. There is a relativeabundance of specific cases that may already be studied, butit is counterbalanced by a chronic lack of data for thehistoric mission and the insufficient reliability of theofficial orbital data. With this new chapter of myExtraterrestrial Astrology I hope I have shown that notonly the calculation of a SR in space is possible, but it is alsonecessary to address these issues. In fact a good fifty peoplehave already had a SR in orbit and we can not ignore thisfact any longer. The number of people who will spend theirbirthday in space is doomed to increase rapidly in the close future. Perhaps even the birth ofthe first human being in space is not as distant as we may believe.

Two short technical notes:

1) The natal charts and the charts of SR are produced by Ciro Discepolos software packageof professional astrology, Astral. I slightly modified them with MS Paint to re-draw thecusps of the Houses and to show how they shift if we consider the deformation of thehorizon in height.


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2) When drawing the deformed charts I applied a rigorous calculation only to the lineASC-DSC. The line MC-IC, in fact, refers to the meridian and does not change with height.The other cusps of the charts in altitude have been reckoned in an approximate way, stilltrying to reflect the criteria of subdivision of the quadrants of the trigonometric Housesystem of Placidus.

1See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patsayev2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Conrad3http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon4see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_diameter_distance5see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterrestrial_skies#The_Earth_from_the_Moon6or satellite tracking software, see http://www.satbuster.com/ or http://www.nlsa.com/7see http://www.pcigeomatics.com/cgi-bin/pcihlp/AVHRCOR|TLE+DATA+FILE

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