[UPDATE]
1. I’ve added support for using the device’ settings (meaning auto GMT and DST) and I’m testing it right now on my iPhone.
2. I’m looking into a solution to help the user figure out what each symbol means.
I intend to send the app with these two new features to Apple in a few days. I’ll post here when it’s waiting for approval.
===========================================================
Planetary Hours is an iPhone application which allows you to always know the Planetary Hours for your current location.
The algorithm to calculate the Planetary Hours needs to know three things: current location’s latitude and longitude, and the GMT offset. By using these data, it calculates the sunrise and sunset for the specified location, and then the Planetary Hours.
Here is how the application looks like:
The main screen, shows you the Planetary Hours for the selected location and GMT offset. In the bottom left corner, you will see the latitude and longitude for the selected location.
In the bottom right corner, if you touch the “i” button, you’ll go to the Preferences screen.
The first field on this screen is the “GMT Offset“. This is equal to 1 for Western Europe and 2 for Eastern Europe. It’s equal to -5 for the US eastern coast, and so on.
During summer, you’ll have to add up the summer daylight saving. This leads to 2 for Western Europe, 3 for Eastern Europe, and -4 for US eastern coast.
The second field on this screen is a switch, called “Use Other Location“. Here you can activate the use of another location, which can be specified manually by latitude and longitude, in the next two fields. This field is disabled and always on for iPod touch users, as you don’t have a built-in GPS. This means you’ll have to specify the location latitude and longitude. You only have to do this once, as the application remembers these values after you restart it. (For instructions on how to find the coordinates for your location, see the end of this article.)
If you’re running the application on an iPhone 3G or 3GS and you have a built in GPS, than you can toggle this switch On or Off, depending on your preferences. If the switch is Off, than you’ll always get the Planetary Hours for your current location, which is much more convenient than specifying the coordinates every time you change your location.
At the bottom of the Preferences screen, you can select the date for which you want to see the Planetary Hours.
If the current date is selected, than the current planetary hour is highlighted in red. If another date is selected, you’ll see all the planetary hours for that specific date, with none of them highlighted.
One thing that you must know, is the fact that a Planetary Day starts with the sunrise and ends with the next sunrise. This means that if it’s 1AM in the morning, you’ll still see the Planetary Hours for the previous calendaristic day, as the Planetary Day isn’t over until the sunrise.
Instructions on how to find the coordinates for your location
There are a lot of on-line tools which can help you find the coordinates for your current location. For example, visit http://www.satsig.net/maps/lat-long-finder.htm and in the “Centre the map around” field enter your location, for example “Paris, France” or “Bucharest, Romania” or “Chicago, Illinois”. Then click “Go!” or hit Return, and the map on the right will center around the specified location. Below the map, you’ll see the coordinates for the specified location. For example, you’ll see “Latitude = 41.8795, Longitude = -87.6243″ if you’ve specified “Chicago, Illinois”.
This is all you need to know to be able to use this application, if you have any questions or comments or suggestions, please add a comment below.
Thank you!
14 Comments
Hi,
I just bought your app on the appstore. It’s great, and very simple to use. I gave it 4 stars. There are two things that I would have liked to have seen that would have earned it 5 stars instead of 4. Support for auto DST detection would have been nice, and also you might want to put the planetary names under their symbols because many new people working with magick are not really familiar with the planetary symbols.
Hi Kelvin,
thanks for your feedback. Adding the hour names in there is pretty tricky as the screen will get pretty crowded with info. I’ll think about a solution for this. I’ll also think about the auto DST detection. I was waiting for some feedback from the users, as I only want to add what you, the users, will use. Thanks for the first feedback!
Is this adjustable for Vedic astrology ? Thankyou. I follow Vedic RSI as instructed by Astroved, a Vedic astrology company.
Planetary Hours only computes the sunrise and sunset and then shows which planet influences each hour (planetary hours). It doesn’t take into consideration zodiac signs or anything else.
Hello. I just purchased the program and it doesn’t seem to be working correctly. I entered by coordinates (43.2 Lat, 77.6 Lng) and it’s showing times for the Day Hours such as 20:-140. That’s not a valid time! In fact, all but one of the Day Hour values consist of 20: and then some negative number. Any idea what’s going on? I have a an ipod touch running the latest operating system. Thanks in advance.
Perhaps more importantly, it won’t allow me to enter a negative value for the longitude. When I enter it it automatically switches it to a positive value. ???
Hi Brenden, can you please tell me your location (city, country) and I’ll help with the right settings you have to use.
Using the coordinates you’ve written there, I suppose you might be around Rochester / New York, which is 5 hours behind the GMT, that’s -5, + 1 for the daylight saving, that’s -4. Coordinates to use in the application for this location are: Latitude 43.13, Longitude -77.38.
Click on the “i” on the main screen, go to the Preferences panel and use: -4.0 for the GMT Offset, 43.13 for the Latitude and -77.38 for the longitude.
To enter negative values, the – sign is right under 1.
And Brenden, next time, instead of submitting a negative review to an app, please ask the developers first. Thank you!
Thanks. I had no trouble locating the negative sign, but when I entered it it automatically switched the number back to a positive value. I tried it again just now and it seems to be working. Maybe it had something to do with the order in which I entered the values? At any rate, I was definitely getting invalid times before, but it’s okay now. I will update by feedback accordingly. Thanks.
Hi! Another one for DST time! I’ve had a hard time to set the offset since I’m in Rio de Janeiro-Brazil (22.92 S 43.27W) and we’re using summertime now. I guess the correct is -2 but software showed 2 at the beginning. Anyway,great software that I’d like to see some future improvements. Thank you!
Hi Sergio!
did you manage to set the GMT offset to -2? Please let me know if you’re having troubles with this.
Yes,because it “came” with 2. Now, works fine with -2 (standard is -3). But it would be great to have DST option. All the best.
Ok, I’ll look into the DST option.
Hi. Great app.
A question : why do some of the hours during the day come up in red ?
A suggestion : referring back to the person who suggested names of the planets. Could you perhaps create an additional page that has the planet symbols and their names that you could a) just swipe to the right to see and the swipe to the left to come back to the page with the hours, and/or b) have a button at the bottom next to the “i” button to take you to that page ?
Hi there, only the current planetary hour should come up in red. If you see more than one at a time, it means something’s wrong. Can you please give me your current coordinates (they’re written on the main screen, in the bottom left corner).
About another screen with explanations for each icon, it’s a great suggestion. Thanks!
One Trackback/Pingback
[...] my first iPhone app to the App Store. You can find the post describing this app by clicking here or on the “Planetary Hours” link from the Sidebar. Yupiiiiii! )) Leave a [...]