Note: I’m looking into a solution to add the symbol/planet names. I might add them right under the symbol, but this makes the main screen look crowded, so I’m searching for a cleaner alternative.
Planetary Hours update 1.1 is available in the App Store.
What’s new in version 1.1: Automatic GMT and Daylight Savings. Supposing that your device, iPhone or iPod touch has the right time, date and location settings, the application will use the same settings to determine the planetary hours.
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:
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- Main Screen
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- Preferences Screen
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 a switch called “System GMT“. If this switch is on, the application will use the time and date settings from the device. Make sure you have the right time and location set on your device if you want the application results to be accurate. In newer versions of the iPhone OS, the location is determined automatically, so you probably don’t need to worry about that.
The second field is the “GMT offset“. This shows you the GMT offset wether you specified it manually or it’s determined from the device’s settings. If you specify the GMT offset manually, keep in mind the following rule: 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 Eastern US coast. During winter, you’ll have 1 for Wester Europe, 2 for Eastern Europe and -5 for Eastern US coast.
The third field on this screen is a switch, called “Manual Lat&Lng“. By setting this switch to ON, you’ll be able to specify manually the 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!
21 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!
Hi, I have many planets in red right now. I am trying to put lat 53.33 N and long 113.30 W. Any suggestions?
Also like the other writer I have many times that have negative minutes. ie 14:-32
Thanks
Hi Maija,
please make sure the GMT offset is correct.
Here’s a couple of questions and suggestions:
1. what device are you running the application on? if you’re running it on an iPhone, the app will use your regional time setting and use the GPS to get your current location.
2. if you’re running the app on an iPod touch, you’ll have to specify on the Preferences screen the GMT offset, the Latitude and the Longitude.
3. Please tell me what values do you see in each field on the Preferences screen and I’ll help you configure the app correctly.
Hi Sergiu, I purchased this app about a month ago and have been using it several times a day religiously (I used to do the calculations manually on a daily basis, so this is alot more portable and efficient)! So firstly thank you so much for creating this!
I was just wondering for a future release if it would be possible to have the Icon of the program change to reflect the current planet and perhaps even a small box that would show on the icon what time the next change would occur. i.e. a symbol of Venus showing the starting time of Mercury.
I’m not sure how hard this would be to implement, but I know it is possible as the stock iphone “Calendar” icon reflects the current weekday and date and changes daily. But this change would help greatly for working Magicians who will be able to at a glance know what the current hour is and how long is left to do a working (without having to navigate all the way into the program).
Kind Regards from Australia
Hi Jes, changing the icon depending on the hour is a great idea.
I’ll think about showing the starting time for the next hour. I was also thinking about configurable notifications, like “notify me X minutes before the next hour starts”; this will be possible for every iPhone with iOS 4 which will be realeased in a few days as a free update to all iPhones and iPod touch.
Hi Sergiu, Thanks heaps for the quick reply and the update
Anything that you can implement to improve the apps usefulness will be much appreciated! The notifications will also definitely be a handy addition! Can’t wait to see it! Keep up the great work!
Hello,
I bought the application.
I’m setting both GMT and Lat&Lng settings to automatic, it seems the inputs are true.
(City: Ankara, Country: Turkey, GMT:3, Lat:39.87 Lng:32.88)
The problem is, the result is different than this web sites calculator: http://www.astrology.com.tr/planetary-hours.asp
The time intervals are same but the sign of the planets are different.
And I’m not sure which is true..
Help please.
Hi Kerim,
First of all, thanks for buying the app! Now let’s figure out where the problem is.
I just tested both the app on the iPhone and the app at astrology.com.tr. And they’re showing almost the same thing, the slight differences between when a planetary hour starts comes from the fact that the coordinates for Ankara on the website are a bit different than the ones you gave.
About the icons, they should be the same and if they’re not, there’s somewhere a wrong setting. This is how you should test: if today is Friday, than the first planetary hour should be Venus. For Saturday, it should be Saturn, then Sunday – Sun, Monday – Moon, Tuesday – Mars, Wednesday – Mercury, Thursday – Jupiter.
This is the first thing you should look for: if the day does not start with the right hour, than it means the app (or the website) is not showing the planetary hours for the current day. Look at the settings and make sure the right day is selected.
On the iPhone, the day is selected automatically, but you might have changed it by mistake.
The second thing to look for when looking at the icons, is the order in which the hours are displayed. The order is always this: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, then again Saturn, Jupiter, and so on.
Using this order, if today is let’s say Friday, then the hours should be: Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, and so on.
Please make sure you have the right day selected also.
Come back here and add a comment if everything is ok but you still have the problem.
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