Aquila Release Notes
Aquila 2.3.5 (August 30, 2026)
The following functionality has been added or enhanced:
• Primary Directions Study: A new Primary Directions study, on a new Direction Studies menu, reports the moments at which the daily rotation of the sphere carries a promissor, or one of its aspect rays, to the natal place of a significator. It offers the Placidian semi-arc and Regiomontanus position circle methods, zodiacal and mundane frames, four latitude treatments, direct and converse directions under either the classical or the modern definition, and seven keys for converting an arc of direction into years of life. Each event reports the arc and the age it falls at, alongside both the ecliptic and the equatorial position of each point.
• Solar Arc Directions Study: A new Solar Arc Directions study, on the Direction Studies menu, advances every natal point by the Sun's own arc and reports the moments at which a directed point, or one of its aspect rays, reaches the natal place of another. The arc can be measured at the true solar rate, at Naibod's mean rate, at one degree per year or at a rate you supply, and it can be applied whole, halved, doubled or reversed, with a day for a year measured as either a solar or a sidereal day. Directions are reported in both the direct and the converse sense, and each event reports the applied arc, the age it falls at, and the directed and natal positions it relates.
• Aspect Preset Classes: Aspect presets now belong to a class, so each kind of aspect table keeps its own presets and its own default. There is a class for aspects between two transiting bodies, one for the Aspect Hotspots table, one for aspects from a transit to a natal place, one for aspects from an eclipse to a natal place, and one for each of the direction studies. A study's aspect table offers only its own class's presets, and a new study starts from that class's default preset, so a Solar Arc Directions study can open on the eighth-harmonic aspects while a Mundane Aspects study opens on conjunctions. Presets saved in earlier versions are carried into every class the first time this version runs.
• Secondary Progressions Study: A new Secondary Progressions study, on the Direction Studies menu, re-reads the ephemeris at one day per year of life and reports each moment a progressed body perfects an aspect to the natal place of another body, timed to the minute. It offers the secondary, tertiary, minor and user-defined rates with a solar or sidereal day standing for the year, reads progressions in both the direct and the converse sense, and advances the progressed angles by a choice of four methods with the Ascendant re-derived at the birth latitude. The progressed inner planets retrograde and station just as the transiting ones do, so a pairing can perfect up to three times; a Motion column tells the passes apart, and a Progressed Instant column reports the exact ephemeris moment behind each event for cross-checking against other programs.
• Profections Study: A new Profections study, on a new Profections menu, computes the Hellenistic time-lord technique that advances each selected natal point one whole sign per period and reports an event at every period boundary, naming the activated sign, the activated natal whole-sign house and the Lord of the Period with his own natal placement. All three levels of the cascade are offered — annual, monthly and daily — with the year turning on the birthday or at the tropical or sidereal solar return, months counted by calendar steps, by 30° of the Sun or as thirteen 28-day months, days at one, two-and-a-half or two-and-a-third days per sign, and the lord named under the traditional or the modern rulership scheme. The Zodiac setting is functional for this study: a sidereal run profects from the sidereal natal signs, the muntha of Tajika practice.
• Prophetic Year of 360 Days: The Primary Directions, Solar Arc Directions and Secondary Progressions studies each offer a Year setting that chooses how long a year of life is: the tropical year of 365.2422 days, or the prophetic year of exactly 360 days with a month of exactly 30. The setting converts the elapsed years a key or rate produces into a date; it never changes the key or rate itself, so Naibod remains the Sun's own mean motion under either reckoning and the arcs and ages a study reports are unchanged — only the dates move. For Secondary Progressions it also fixes the month behind the tertiary and minor rates, making the three standard rates exactly one, twelve and thirty progressed days per year of life. The Profections study offers the same reckoning as a Prophetic Year boundary that turns every 360 days from birth, with a matching 30-Day Months option that pairs exactly with the existing two-and-a-half days per sign, so the year, the month and the day divide one another without remainder. That boundary offers the 30-Day Months, 12-Month and 28-Day Month divisions; Solar Months belongs to the birthday and solar-return boundaries, which are the ones measured against the Sun. Existing studies are unaffected: every study opens on the tropical year.
• Station Event Counts: The Swiss Ephemeris library has been rebuilt for greater numerical consistency, which shifts computed positions far below the ephemeris's own accuracy. A station study may occasionally report one more or one fewer event than in earlier versions, where a body's motion sat exactly on the boundary between direct and retrograde.
The following bugs were fixed:
• Unsaved Changes Prompt When Closing With The Window Chrome: Closing the Locations editor and the Natal Records editor with the title-bar close button or Alt+F4 discarded unsaved edits without asking. All four ways of closing the editor — File ▸ Exit, the Close button, the title-bar close button and Alt+F4 — now raise the same Unsaved Changes prompt, and Cancel keeps the window open with the edits intact.
• CSV Import No Longer Discards The First Line: Importing a Locations or Natal Records CSV whose first line was neither the exported column header nor a complete data row discarded that line and then reported the import as successful. Such a line is now reported so it can be corrected, and a file whose values are all quoted — as a spreadsheet writes when told to quote every text field — now imports every row, including the first.
• Copying an Event Did Nothing When the Clipboard Was Unavailable: The events table's Copy commands — Date, Date and Time and Event Descriptions, on both the study and timeline tables — silently did nothing when the clipboard could not be opened, for instance while another program was holding it. They now confirm a successful copy with a brief "Copied" message and report the reason when one fails.
• Applying an Ephemeris Preset Could Change a Study's Coordinate Origin: Some studies do not offer every coordinate origin — the station studies exclude Heliocentric, since a station is a geocentric phenomenon. Applying a preset that named an origin such a study does not offer forced the study onto Geocentric, discarding the origin it was already set to. The study now keeps its own origin, and every other setting in the preset applies as before.
Aquila 2.3.4 (August 17, 2026)
The following functionality has been added or enhanced:
• Checkbox Styling: Checkboxes now carry the same styling as the dropdowns and text boxes beside them, keeping one background and border whether they are ticked or not, so the tick alone shows whether a setting is on. A checkbox that has the keyboard focus now draws the same accent-colored border every other field draws, where before it gave no sign of holding the focus, and the accent color is no longer used to fill a ticked box.
The following bugs were fixed:
• Pasting Into Date and Time Fields: Pasting into a date or time field with the keyboard — Ctrl+V on Windows, Cmd+V on macOS — now replaces the value as expected. Previously the keystroke did nothing whenever the field already held a complete date or time, and the value could only be replaced by right-clicking the field and choosing Paste.
Aquila 2.3.3 (August 5, 2026)
The following functionality has been added or enhanced:
• About Dialog Icon: The About dialog now shows the application's full-colour icon image in place of the previous single-colour symbol.
• Meridian House System: The Meridian (Axial Rotation) house system is now available wherever a house system can be chosen, including the House Ingresses study and the Default Settings editor. It divides the celestial equator into twelve exact 30° arcs and projects them onto the ecliptic; its first cusp is the East Point rather than the Ascendant.
• Timekeeping System: The application's timekeeping system has been brought up to date.
Aquila 2.3.2 (July 31, 2026)
The following functionality has been added or enhanced:
• Uranian Bodies: The eight Uranian (Hamburg-school) hypothetical planets — Cupido, Hades, Zeus, Kronos, Apollon, Admetos, Vulkanus, and Poseidon — are now selectable in study body lists as a new Uranians group, which always appears last. Because six of the eight sit permanently on the ecliptic, the declination/latitude studies (Mundane Parallels, Parallel Activations, Transiting Parallels, Latitude Extrema, Nodal Transits, Solar Limit Transits) and Appulse Minima do not offer them. Workspaces saved with Uranian bodies are not readable by earlier Aquila versions (the bodies are silently dropped there).
• Keyboard Study Reordering: Studies in the main window list can now be reordered from the keyboard — ALT+UP and ALT+DOWN (OPTION+UP and OPTION+DOWN on macOS) move the selected study one position. Dragging a study with the mouse continues to work as before.
Aquila 2.3.1 (July 26, 2026)
The following functionality has been added or enhanced:
• Control Labels: Control labels were re-styled with a slightly smaller font size, so they sit more subtly beside the values they describe.
• Natal Records UTC Offset: Exported natal records now include a UTC Offset column after the natal date, recording the clock offset in effect at the moment of birth. For a birth time that occurred twice — during the repeated hour when clocks are set back at the end of daylight saving — the offset identifies which occurrence is meant, so importing the file restores the exact birth moment instead of assuming the daylight-saving occurrence. Files exported by earlier versions do not carry this column and must be re-exported before they can be imported.
• Timeline Event Charts: Double-clicking an event row in a Timeline study now opens its astrological chart in Compass. Because a timeline aggregates events from multiple studies with differing settings, each row opens its chart with the settings of the study that produced it.
• Location Import and Export: The Locations editor now has a menu bar matching the Natal Records editor, including a Data menu for importing and exporting the location collection as a CSV file with Name, Latitude, Longitude, and Height columns.
Aquila 2.3.0 (July 21, 2026)
The following functionality has been added or enhanced:
• Grand Squares Study: A new Grand Squares study has been added — Aquila's first four-body aspect pattern study. It finds the moments when four transiting bodies form a geometric square on the zodiac, with each body opposing one of the other bodies and square the other two (within orb). The study offers four selectable body lists (Inner, Inner-Mid, Outer-Mid, and Outer Bodies), each with its own body-selection presets, and is available from the Aspect Patterns menu, and the toolbar.
• Grand Square Activations Study: A new Grand Square Activations study has been added. It finds the moments when four transiting bodies form a Grand Square (within the aspect orb) while at least one of the transiting bodies is conjunct (within the transit orb) a natal body, activating that natal body. The study offers five selectable body lists (Inner, Inner-Mid, Outer-Mid, Outer, and Natal Bodies), each with its own body-selection presets, and is available from the Transit Studies menu and the Aspect Patterns toolbar dropdown.
• Kites Study: A new Kites study has been added. It finds the moments when three transiting bodies form a Grand Trine and a fourth body opposes (within orb) one of them, creating a kite-shaped figure. The study offers four selectable body lists (Inner, Inner-Mid, Outer-Mid, and Outer Bodies), each with its own body-selection presets, and is available from the Aspect Patterns menu and the toolbar.
• Kite Activations Study: A new Kite Activations study has been added. It finds the moments when three transiting bodies form a Grand Trine and a fourth transiting body opposes one of them — forming a Kite, all within the aspect orb — while at least one of the transiting bodies is conjunct (within the transit orb) a natal body, activating that natal body. The study offers five selectable body lists (Inner, Inner-Mid, Outer-Mid, Outer, and Natal Bodies), each with its own body-selection presets, and is available from the Transit Studies menu and the Aspect Patterns toolbar dropdown.
• Compass Chart Hand-Off: Double-clicking an event in the events table now opens an astrological chart of that moment in Compass — Rhythm Seven's dedicated charting application — using the same settings the study used to calculate the event: the exact instant (including daylight-saving-ambiguous times), location, zodiac, coordinate origin, reference plane, natal data, body lists, and aspect angles. A running Compass shows the chart immediately; an installed Compass is launched automatically. Charting lives entirely in Compass, where each chart window offers its own location, date/time, ephemeris, body, and aspect settings. Compass is a separate product to Aquila.
• Ambiguous Birth Times at Daylight Saving Transitions: When clocks are set back at the end of daylight saving time, one hour of local time occurs twice, and a birth time recorded in that hour was silently interpreted as the first (daylight time) occurrence — computing Universal Time an hour early for births meant as the second (standard time) occurrence. The Natal Records editor now flags such times with a warning marker and, on save, asks which occurrence is meant — showing both interpretations with their time zone abbreviations, UTC offsets, and resulting Universal Times — and stores the choice with the record so every study and chart uses the intended moment. Times that never existed because clocks jumped forward are now flagged as well, with a confirmation showing the adjusted time.
The following bugs were fixed:
• Missing Cancel Option When Closing Editors: The unsaved-changes prompt shown when closing the Locations Editor or Natal Records Editor with unsaved changes offered no way to cancel the close. The prompt now offers Yes (save and close), No (close without saving), and Cancel (keep the window open).
• Date and Time Picker Text Alignment: At some Windows display-scaling settings (for example 125%), the text inside date and time pickers sat one pixel higher than the text in neighboring dropdowns and text boxes, making it appear slightly above center. Picker text now lines up with the surrounding controls at every display scale.
Aquila 2.2.5 (July 8, 2026)
The following functionality has been added or enhanced:
• Grouped Body Selection Lists: The body selection lists now organize celestial bodies under collapsible groups — Diurnal Angles, Planets, Barycenters, Lunar Axis, Asteroids, and Centaurs. Click a group's row (or press Space or Enter on it) to open or close the group, with the chevron rotating to show its state. The Planets and Lunar Axis groups start open, and each group's open/closed state is remembered while the study remains open; a group's checked bodies are always preserved, even while the group is closed.
• Animated Chevrons: The chevron indicators on the dropdown, date picker, and time picker controls now animate smoothly as they open and close, giving clearer visual feedback.
• Moon Type for Every Lunar Phase: The Lunar Phases study now reports a Moon Type for every phase instead of leaving the column blank for anything other than New and Full Moons. New and Full Moons continue to show Supermoon, Micromoon, or Normal, while the remaining phases show Near, Far, or Normal based on the Moon's distance from Earth at that moment.
• Extrema Event Filtering: The Speed Extrema and Latitude Extrema studies use an improved filtering algorithm to remove spurious events caused by short-term perturbations. Candidate events are now compared at full precision and filtered by a single consistent significance rule, so when several borderline events cluster together the most significant one is kept, producing more stable and complete results across all bodies.
• Appulse Minima Study: A new mundane study that finds the moments when two transiting bodies reach their closest approach in the sky. Unlike a longitude-based conjunction, it measures the true angular distance between the bodies — combining longitude/right ascension with latitude/declination — and reports each minimum that falls within a user-editable Appulse Orb (default 3°). Wobble-induced duplicates (most visible with a Topocentric coordinate origin) are filtered so each close approach is reported once, at its deepest point. The study is available from the Mundane Studies → Aspects menu and the Aspect Studies toolbar dropdown, directly after Mundane Aspects.
The following bugs were fixed:
• Topocentric Speed Extrema: The Speed Extrema study produced badly incomplete results with a Topocentric coordinate origin — the Sun yielded no events at all over an entire century, and Mars and the outer planets yielded only a small fraction of their true extrema, some mislabeled. The daily parallax oscillation caused by Earth's rotation was overwhelming the detection of the underlying orbital cycle; it is now cancelled out, so topocentric event coverage matches the expected per-cycle counts and topocentric studies also generate significantly faster.
• Speed Extrema for Oscillating Bodies: Genuine speed maximum/minimum pairs spanning a switch between direct and retrograde motion — as occurs for the True Node and the Osculating Apogee — could be wrongly discarded as noise when the two speeds were similar in magnitude but opposite in sign. The filter now compares signed speeds, preserving these events.
• Patterns in Orb at the Study Start: The three-body pattern studies (Grand Trines, T-Squares, Yods, Stelliums, and their Activation counterparts) silently skipped a pattern that was already within orb when the study period began, even when its moment of greatest exactness fell inside the period. Such patterns are now detected and reported at their peak; a pattern whose peak precedes the study period still correctly produces no event.
• T-Square and Yod Peak Times: In rare cases the T-Square and Yod studies (and their Activation counterparts) could report a peak time at which the pattern was no longer within orb, because the total angular deviation could measure smaller just outside the pattern window than inside it. The peak search is now constrained to moments where every defining aspect is within the orb.
Aquila 2.2.4 (July 4, 2026)
The following functionality has been added or enhanced:
• Removed Parallels Study Types: The Balanced Parallels, Midpoint Parallels, and Transiting Midpoint Parallels study types have been removed from Aquila and are no longer available when creating studies. Existing workspaces that do not use these studies are unaffected.
• IsBalanced Event Filter Function: A new IsBalanced function is available in the Event Filter editor's Functions menu. It tests whether two bodies sit at mirror-image positions on opposite sides of a balance point — one body's signed separation from the balance point must mirror the other's, within a chosen orb. For example, IsBalanced(Body1, Body2, 90, 3) matches when the two bodies are balanced about 90° within a 3° orb.
• Mundane Parallels Separation Column: The Mundane Parallels events table now includes a Separation column showing the shortest distance in longitude (or right ascension, when using the Equatorial reference plane) between the two transiting bodies, from 0° to 180°. The column appears immediately after Outer Body Speed and is shown by default.
• Transiting Parallels Separation Column: The Transiting Parallels events table now includes a Separation column showing the shortest distance in longitude (or right ascension, when using the Equatorial reference plane) between the transiting body and the natal body, from 0° to 180°. The column appears immediately after Natal Body Speed and is shown by default.
• Event Generation Performance: Memory usage during event generation has been substantially reduced. Long-range studies now create far less temporary memory while scanning, filtering, and displaying events, reducing pauses caused by memory collection.
• Event Filter Performance: Compiled event filters now evaluate with zero per-event memory allocation. Filtered studies previously created roughly 2 KB of temporary memory for every candidate event — up to a million times per run — which has been eliminated, further reducing memory-collection pauses during long filtered generations.
• Event Filter Compile-Time Validation: Mistakes in an event filter — an unknown name or function, wrong argument types, or an expression that does not produce true/false — are now reported immediately when the filter is compiled, with a clear message and position, instead of failing partway through event generation.
• On-Demand Filter Positions: Filtered studies now calculate only the celestial body positions the event filter actually references, instead of all of them for every candidate event. A filter that uses only the event's own bodies (for example, IsRetrograde(Body1)) no longer performs any extra ephemeris calculations, which speeds up long filtered runs that generate many events.
The following bugs were fixed:
• Hotspot Transits Description: Hotspot Transit event descriptions repeated the hotspot position twice (for example, “…at 15°Ari00'15°Ari00'.”). Descriptions now state the critical degree once, as a numeric position (for example, “…at 45.000° longitude.”).
• Station Hotspots Description: Station Hotspot event descriptions ended with a garbled character after the hotspot position. Descriptions now state the critical degree as a numeric position.
• Mundane Arcs Description: Mundane Arc event descriptions displayed a garbled character in place of the degree symbol. The degree symbol now displays correctly.
• Superior Planetary Cycles Description: The event description repeated the post-opposition day count where the number of days between the direct station and the solar conjunction belonged. The description now shows the correct pre-conjunction period. The events table columns were always correct.
• Event Filter Numeric Equality: Comparing a position value against a whole-number literal with == or != (for example, Sun.Longitude == 180) always evaluated as not equal, even when the values matched. Numeric comparisons now work regardless of whether the literal is written as 180 or 180.0.
Aquila 2.2.3 (June 29, 2026)
The following functionality has been added or enhanced:
• Refreshed Look & Feel: The application's overall appearance has been polished, with refined visuals and more consistent styling across its screens for a cleaner, more comfortable experience.
The following bugs were fixed:
• Numeric Field Entry on macOS: Numeric fields (such as orb values) and editable numeric grids now correctly reject non-numeric input on macOS, matching the behavior on Windows. Typing letters or other invalid characters no longer enters them, and pasting mixed text into a numeric field keeps only the valid number.
• Click to Select a Date or Time: Clicking into a date or time field now highlights the whole value so you can immediately type a new one — the same as tabbing into the field. Clicking a second time places the cursor where you click, so you can still edit just part of the date or time.
Aquila 2.2.2 (June 20, 2026)
The following functionality has been added or enhanced:
• Date & Time Controls: New date and time entry controls have been added for defining study parameters. They use the same source code as the equivalent controls in the Natal Records Editor. This ensures a consistent data entry experience within the application and across applications.
• Clear All Bodies: The body selection lists now offer a Clear All command in the right-click menu, directly below Deselect. Selecting it unchecks every body in the list at once, regardless of which rows are highlighted. The option is available whenever at least one body is selected.
• Clear All for Every Selection List: The Clear All command is now available in the right-click menu of every selection list, including Moon phase types, eclipse types, and the timeline's generator studies list. As with the body lists, it unchecks every item at once regardless of the current highlight and is available whenever at least one item is selected.
• Delete Selected & Delete All: The Arcs, Aspects, and Hotspot Degrees tables now offer Delete Selected and Delete All commands at the top of the right-click menu, above Presets. Delete Selected removes the highlighted rows and Delete All clears the entire table, so values can be removed without reaching for the keyboard Delete key. Both commands are unavailable while the study is locked, and each is enabled only when there is something to remove.
• Searchable Dropdown Keyboard Navigation: When a searchable dropdown (such as the Natal Record picker) is open, the arrow keys now move a highlight through the list without choosing an item. Press Enter or Tab to assign the highlighted item — Tab then advances to the next field — or Escape to close the list without changing the selection. Pressing the Up arrow from the first item returns to the search box.
• Diagnostic Log: Aquila now keeps a diagnostic log that records problems such as unreadable settings or preset files, failed saves, and unexpected errors, so issues like presets unexpectedly reverting to defaults can be diagnosed after the fact. The log is a plain text file in the application data folder (on Windows, Logs\Aquila.log inside the Aquila folder under AppData\Local), keeps only the most recent history, and never interferes with normal use of the application.
• Dark Theme by Default: On first launch — before any theme preference has been saved — the application now starts in the dark theme instead of the light theme. Your saved theme preference is still remembered and applied on later launches, and you can switch between light and dark at any time.
• Application Colors: A critical review of the application color scheme was done.
• Orb Range Validation: Orb values are now clamped between 0 and 90 degrees. If an entry falls outside that range it is automatically adjusted to the nearest limit — values below 0 become 0 and values above 90 become 90.
• Faster Study Switching: Switching between studies is now near-instantaneous. Previously, selecting a different study unloaded the current study's results and rebuilt the next one from scratch — a noticeable delay for studies containing many records. Each study's results are now kept ready in the background, so switching is immediate, and a study's column layout and selected row are preserved when you return to it.
• Code Maintainability: An extensive refactor of the application's source code was completed. It introduces no change to how the application looks or behaves, but it streamlines the underlying code so the application can be maintained and enhanced more easily going forward.
The following bugs were fixed:
• Timeline Refresh: A timing conflict could cause a timeline study's event list to silently fail to refresh when a source study's events were regenerated, cleared, or deleted at the same moment. The refresh is now protected against this conflict, and any remaining refresh problem is reported in the diagnostic log instead of being lost.
• Default Table Layout Errors: An error that occurred while applying the saved default table layout to a study's results table could escape unnoticed instead of being reported. Such errors now display the intended error message and are recorded in the diagnostic log.
• Editing Date & Time Fields: Highlighting only some of the digits within a segment of a date or time field — a day, month, year, hour, minute, or second — and typing now replaces just the highlighted digits in place. Previously this cleared the entire field and the typed digits landed at the very beginning. For example, with the year 2152 you can now highlight the "15" and type "26" to get 2262.
Aquila 2.2.1 (May 31, 2026)
The following functionality has been added or enhanced:
• Keyboard Navigation: Improved keyboard navigation behaviour when tabbing from one control to another for mutliple control types.
• Spacebar Toggle: When one or more rows are selected (highlighted) in a list of selectable items (e.g. list of bodies), pressing the spacebar will now toggle the checkbox state.
• System Updates: All software components have been updated to the latest versions.
The following bugs were fixed:
• Table Edit Mode: Fixed a bug that put the first row of the arc, aspect, hotspot, location editor, and natal records editor tables into edit mode when the user initially clicked on the row to select it.
• Row Highlight: Fixed a bug where tabbing onto a selectable bodies list (or other selectable items list) left the focused row unhighlighted until the user pressed an arrow key.
• Recent Files: Fixed a bug that left the application in an unusable state when opening a workspace from the Recent Files menu whose containing folder no longer exists.
Aquila 2.2.0 (May 6, 2026)
⚠ Not backward compatible: The Heliacal Phenomenon study's atmospheric and observer parameters changed in this release with the introduction of the Sky Conditions and Visual Acuity selectors. Heliacal Phenomenon studies in workspaces saved by earlier versions of Aquila will deserialize with the lowest-quality buckets (Sky Conditions = Poor, Visual Acuity = Normal) rather than the new application defaults; review and re-run any existing Heliacal Phenomenon studies after upgrading.
The following functionality has been added or enhanced:
• Event Descriptions: Descriptions no longer label a body as "transiting" unless the event involves a natal body. This removes unnecessary terminology from mundane events.
• Reference Planes: When switching between geocentric/topocentric and heliocentric reference planes, existing body selections are maintained using a Sun/Earth equivalence where applicable.
• Numeric Tables: The button next to the value entry box on the Arcs, Aspects, and Hotspot Degrees tables has been re-purposed. Click it to add the value you have typed into the box — the same action as pressing the Enter key. The button is enabled only when a value has been entered.
• Presets for Numeric Tables: Saved presets for the Arcs, Aspects, and Hotspot Degrees tables are now accessed by right-clicking anywhere on the table below the column header. The context menu lists the available presets and the options for managing them, matching the way presets work for body selection lists.
• Time Zones Database: The global time zones database has been updated to the latest version.
• Heliacal Visibility Model: The Heliacal Phenomenon study now exposes a Visibility Model selector (Arcus Visionis, Schaefer Visibility Limit, Schoch Min 7°, Schoch Min 9°, Pannekoek-Törnquist) that controls the algorithm Swiss Ephemeris uses to determine first/last visibility. The new default is Arcus Visionis, matching traditional astrological tooling. Users who relied on the previous results should explicitly select "Schaefer Visibility Limit" — for inferior planets such as Venus the choice can shift event dates by several days.
• Heliacal Sky Conditions: The Heliacal Phenomenon study now exposes a Sky Conditions selector (Poor, Good, Excellent) that sets the Bemporad atmospheric extinction coefficient used in visibility calculations. The default is Good; clearer skies allow bodies to be seen closer to the Sun and shorten the invisibility window around conjunction.
• Heliacal Visual Acuity: The Heliacal Phenomenon study now exposes a Visual Acuity selector (Normal, Good, Superior) that sets the observer's Snellen ratio used in visibility calculations. The default is Superior, matching the convention used by traditional astrological tooling; sharper acuity lets the observer detect a body at lower contrast and shifts heliacal events closer to conjunction.
• Heliacal Solar Elongation: The Heliacal Phenomenon events table now includes a Solar Elongation column showing the signed angular difference between the body and the Sun (positive when the body is ahead of the Sun in zodiacal longitude/right-ascension order, negative when behind), normalised to the range −180° to +180° and displayed to five decimal places. The column is visible by default and sits between Body Speed and Sun Longitude.
• System Updates: All software components have been updated to their latest versions.
The following bugs were fixed:
• Latitude Extrema: Fixed an error where the event description builder incorrectly labeled latitude maxima as minima. This issue was limited to Timeline Studies and event descriptions copied directly from the events table.
Aquila 2.1.3 (April 7, 2026)
The following functionality has been added or enhanced:
• Update Notifications: When a new version of Aquila is available for download, a toolbar button with a download glyph will appear next to the theme toggle button in the top-right region of the application window. Clicking on the button opens the download page for Aquila in the user's default web browser.
• System Updates: All software components have been updated to their latest versions.
The following bugs were fixed:
• Eclipse Metrics Tables: Fixed a crash that occurred when either Select or Deselect was clicked on in the context menu for the Eclipse Metrics tables (Lunar or Solar Eclipse studies).