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Welcome to Compass

Compass is a professional astrological charting application. It draws traditional wheel charts in three kinds (Mundane, Natal, and Transit) and gives you full control over the frame each chart is calculated in, the celestial points it plots, and the aspects it matches.

The application itself is a compact floating shell: a small menu bar and toolbar that stay out of your way and open chart windows as you need them. Each chart lives in its own window, so you can keep several charts on screen at once and compare them side by side.

The compact main window, whose toolbar carries the chart, settings, and theme controls.

What You Can Do with Compass​

Compass covers the full working cycle, from the saved data a chart is drawn from to the finished wheel on screen.

  • Draw a chart in one gesture: open a Mundane, Natal, or Transit chart from the Charts menu or the toolbar, and adjust it once it is on screen.
  • Read the sky over a place and moment: a Mundane chart plots the sky above a chosen location at a chosen instant, with no natal reference.
  • Draw a saved record's chart: a Natal chart plots the sky at the moment and place recorded in one of your saved natal records.
  • Compare a moving sky against a natal chart: a Transit chart carries two point sets on one band and matches the aspects between them.
  • Work inside one consistent chart window: every chart type shares the same chart window, with a settings column on the left and the wheel on the right.
  • Move a chart through time: step the chart forward or back by seconds through years, or jump straight to a date and time, from the time navigation band.
  • Lift a position or an aspect out of the wheel: right-click a body glyph or an aspect chord and copy its text to the clipboard from the chart wheel context menu.
  • Set the frame a chart is calculated in: choose the zodiac, the vantage point, the reference plane, the wheel's orientation, the house division, and the declination parallels from the chart calculation frame.
  • Choose which points take part: tick the celestial points you work with in the bodies list, and recall a familiar set in one gesture with bodies presets.
  • Control which aspects are drawn: add, edit, and remove the aspect angles a chart matches at, and save sets of them as aspect presets.
  • Decide how every chart looks: set the palette on the Chart Colors tab and what a newly opened chart starts as on the Chart Defaults tab.
  • Define what an aspect is, per chart type: give each aspect its own name, orb, angles, and color in the Aspect Definition Editor, and set the declination tolerances in Parallel Aspect Settings.
  • Keep your reference data in one place: maintain your working set of places in the Locations Editor and your people, entities, and founding moments in the Natal Records Editor.
  • Move data in and out: bring a list in from a CSV file with Import Locations or Import Natal Records, and write a portable copy back out with Export Locations or Export Natal Records.
  • Open a chart straight from a sibling application: a double-click in Aquila or Cygnus opens the matching chart here, already set to that moment.
  • Match the application to your working light: switch the whole application between its Light and Dark themes with Toggle Theme.
  • Keep the launcher reachable: float the shell above your chart windows with Keep Main Window on Top.

Getting Help​

  • The About Dialog shows the version you are running and how your license or trial stands. Quote the version number when you report a problem.
  • Open Documentation brings this manual up in your default web browser from inside the application.
  • The update notification button appears at the right of the toolbar when a newer release exists, and takes you to the download page in one click.