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What I love about each astrology program
By Hank Friedman

Last Updated Tuesday, February 11, 2025

I've been around since the beginning of astrology software in the late 1970's, and have explored virtually every astrology program written in the last 50 years (with the exception of foreign language software).

Every astrology program I've seen has at least one or more innovative features, and they are each designed uniquely, with their own style.

Note: this article is a work in progress. I will continue adding to it for several weeks at least, so please be patient as I work to complete it.





Solar Fire

When Microsoft created their version of a Graphical User Interface, complete with movable and resizable windows; menus, buttons and toolbars; icons, and a pointer controlled by a mouse, astrology software companies began to create astrology programs to work with these design elements.

The first and most successful program to utilize the new Windows interface was Solar Fire, thanks to programming genius Graham Dawson and especially program designer Stephanie Johnson.

From its beginnings, Solar Fire quickly became the professional program of choice, with both a wide range of features and amazing ease-of-use.

Among the very many unique capabilities pioneered by its authors are a Page Designer that enables one to create pages of chart wheels, graphs, tables, aspect grids, and listings, with by far more choices and with greater ease than any other astrology program.

One day I decided to try an experiment, would Solar Fire allow me to create a page with four biwheels on it, so I could watch four different predictive events unfold -- using chart animation -- at the same time?

I carefully created the page with four biwheels and voilà I was able to watch transits, secondary progressions, Solar Arc directions, and Profections all circle my birth chart in separate biwheels, at their own rate! No other astrology program has anywhere near this capability.

Over time I've been able to create an incredible number of great pages.

Speaking of Chart Animation, Solar Fire has the best implementation of this feature. You can not only animate up to five concentric wheels, you can animate whole pages so that all of the tables and graphs and charts all update with each time shift.

Solar Fire Chart Search and Electional Search tools allow you to search charts on file and spans of time respectively for an incredible number of astrological factors, again so easily and with more factors than any other Western astrology program.

Have you ever wanted to print out a specific set of charts for every new client? Solar Fire's Astrologer's Assistant can record any set of tasks and then redo them whenever you want.

For example, you can have it print out a natal chart, biwheel with transits around the natal chart, an astromap for your country, and a transit graph, all at the push of a button!

You can even create any number different sets for different purposes.

Solar Maps is my go to astromapping program for several reasons:

It has the best user interface of any astromapping module, making it simple to zoom in and out or move the map around, get well-written relocation reports or relocation charts for any places with a single click, change the lines shown, add cities, etc.

I just love working with it.

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Janus

 I have worked steadily for decades to encourage astrology software companies to keep prices down because astrologers are often on tight budgets.

So when the authors of Janus agreed to lower its price and keep improving their creation, I was delighted.

As a result, Janus is by far the best buy of any astrology program, and it also keeps being updated at a faster rate than any other astrology software, with many free updates for each version.

Most astrology software either has either no built-in delineations, or only very brief interpretations of birth charts, transits, and compatibility; but Janus includes complete well-written natal, transit, compatibility, and relocation reports that are even fully licensed for resale. Bravo!

This makes Janus great for beginners as a learning tool, or for those wanting to give clients reports.

The creators of Janus worked with the legendary Medieval astrologer Robert Zoller in designing their Traditional Astrology module. As a result, many Medieval and Hellenistic astrologers love Janus, and find these functions wonderfully executed.

As both a Western and Vedic astrologer, I sometimes want to look at Vedic charts while working in a Western astrology program, so I helped the authors design their Vedic module, which has many unique features not found in other Western astrology programs including a Dasha Report, Full Panchang, four Vedic charts on one screen, and a Planet Conditions listing which shows strength/weakness scores, Avastha, aspects and rulerships, and more.

The Unique Predictive Searches in Janus are also a favorite of mine. You can find Super Moons, a variety of Declinational events, planets Out of Bounds, Equatorial crossings, interpolated planetary stations, and more.

At one point I became interested in Diurnal Charts and was surprised that only Janus has the ability to create them!

And Janus and Solar Fire are the two best-designed astrology programs with outstanding functionality and ease-of-use.

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Shri Jyoti Star

As some of you might know, I have a deep love of both Western and Vedic astrologies, and have explored all of the major Vedic astrology programs.

When I am doing any kind of Jyotish work, I always use Shri Jyoti Star.

The program is a masterpiece.

Not only is it the only Vedic program that uses the ACS atlas, and therefore has the most trustworthy time zone calculations and accurate charts, but it also has many more capabilities, by far.

For example, you can design your own screens and printouts with an incredible number of options including specifying the number of tables/charts/graphs on any page, create dozens of your own screens and printed pages, draw from an unbelieveably huge collection of charts, tables, graphs, grids, and lists (including customizeable tables -- which I adore), and so much more.

What I am completely in awe of are Shri Jyoti Star's research tools. You can search your chart files for almost anything, and combine conditions to your heart's content. There is nothing that comes close to its power anywhere else in astrology software.

A basic example: I want to find charts that have the Moon in Scorpio and Mars powerful (i.e. in own sign, exalted, Retrograde, or with Dig Bala). I can find charts that meet this criteria in seconds.

And much more complex searches can also easily be created and run, and the program allows you to step through each chart that fulfils the search and see it.

Vedic astromapping is another phenomenal feature only in Shri Jyoti Star. You can not only view astromaps for two people at once (which no other program allows), but when you relocate a chart to a new area, by clicking on the map, all of the charts, tables, and graphs on your page shift to the new location. Wow!

I've used this live with many clients and would really miss out if it wasn't available.

The Rectification bar in Shri Jyoti Star has the same power. When you move the chart forward or backward -- by time increments or Navamsha or Rasi -- again everything on the screen is updated to the new time, making it incredibly easy to see the effects of changing the birth or event time.

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Prometheus

When I first explored Prometheus, I realized that its designer was quite brilliant. Prometheus has many great and very useful capabiities that no other astrology software has, and I quickly learned to love Prometheus.

New note: I just discovered, thanks to a customer, that Prometheus also has a multi-lingual interface. You can effortlessly choose to run the program's interface in English, Italian, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Greek, Russian, or Chinese (either Traditional or Simplified). Amazing!


Sidebar on Transit Graphs

In the early days of astrology software, I worked extensively with transits, and wanted to see them graphed over time, to make it easy to note when they began and ended, and how they overlapped.

While there were rudimentary transit graphs in some programs, none dealt with planetary stations.

When a transiting planet stands still within the orb of a natal planet, its effect is often greatly magnified, especially close to the time of the station. So it's very important to see when they occur.

A kind and generous astrologer named Howard Sambol created a program that produced a transit listing, and he decided to provide me with his source code so that I could design my own transit graph that included the times when planets stood still.

After many hours of programming, my transit graph was complete, and I used it for years. (And happily shared it with him.)

Still, it was black-and-white and a bit basic looking, but it did the job beautifully.

Over the years, with the changes in the operating systems of computers, I eventually lost the ability to create my graphs, and implored all of major astrology software companies to add stations to their graphs.

Juan Saba was the first person to respond, adding stations to his transit graph in Regulus Platinum, for which I was deeply grateful.

Years later, many companies caught up and currently the best transit graph with stations interpolated is in the Prometheus astrology program.


Why is the transit graph in Prometheus the best, and the one that I use for all of my clients?

First of all, it is beautiful and incredibly readable. That's no small thing as its lovely design makes it supremely functional.

In addition, it's the only transit graphs that allows you to select a different set of aspects for each planet. For example, I want to see semisquares and sesquares made by transiting Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, and not for other transiting planets, and only Prometheus makes this possible.

You can create any number of sets of transit sets, e.g ones that include your choice of Directions and Progressions, and/or Eclipses and VOC Moon, others that show both slow and fast planets, etc.; and you can select from many moving and natal points (see below).

The most unique and phenomenal capability throughout Prometheus is that it allows you to use a mind-boggling number of points in most of its modules, including all wheels, predictive graphs, ephemeris generator, astromaps, and even its planetarium.

No astrology program comes close to what Prometheus allows you to include.

You can add asteroids, Uranian points, Hypothetical planets, angles, house cusps, Fixed Stars, Arabic Parts, Lunar Nodes and Apsides, Planetary nodes, Apogee/Perigee for planets, Equinox/Solstice points, the Galactic Center, Solar Apex, current or previous Lunations and Eclipses, and Midpoints to your hearts content.

And, of course, create any number of sets for different purposes.

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Regulus Platinum

Most astrology programs have been written in one language, and so astrologers who don't speak that language are at a great disadvantage.

The author of Regulus Platinum decided to make his astrology program more universal, and accessible to many more people, by offering its interface in many different languages including Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, and Italian.

As a pioneer and champion in the Huber astrology system, Juan made Regulus Platinum the program of choice for all Huber astrologers, with an incredible number of Huber functions.

Which is not to say that Regulus Platinum is a specialized program. It has a good Vedic module (able to show up to 12 vargas at once!), Hellenistic and Medieval modules, astromapping, transit graphs, harmonics, midpoints, Fixed Stars, asteroids, and so much more.

And he's open to astrologers all over the World and has incorporated many of their approaches into the program (not available anywhere else).

For example, many years ago I designed a program that I called LifeScan that would print out all of the major transits for a person for 50 years on just a couple of pages.

I asked Juan if he'd add this to Regulus, and he immediately created his own LifeScan modules that are much better than mine! They can do LifeScans for transits or progressions or directions, optionally include sign and house ingresses and aspects to cusps, and choose the starting date and number of years for the scan.

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Janus Light

Janus Light is the perfect program for beginning astrologers and for those who just want to dabble in astrology.

For an incredibly low price, Janus Light provides very good birth chart, predictive, compatibility, and relocation reports.

I have always wanted to see a starter astrology program at an affordable price, and the authors of Janus Light surprised me with how much the software can do.

Besides the reports, you can see single wheels and biwheels and even animate them (e.g. watch the transits circle the birth chart).

And there's even an astrology calendar and astromapping!

I wish Janus Light was available when I was just beginning my astrology studies.

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Sirius

Sirius is a major upgrade of the Kepler program, with a full range of calculations for all of the major schools of astrology.

One of its most outstanding features is its built-in database of over 90,000 charts of famous people, countries, company charts, and events.

It also has the largest, most complete time-change atlas of any astrology program.

This chart file enables you to see the charts of musicians, movie stars, scientists, politicians, and all sorts of other people, and is a great asset in helping you learn astrology.

I also really like the pop-up interpretations in the program's Vedic module, as well as the huge number of well-written add-on reports.

The built in Asteroid and the Fixed Star reports are phenomenal, in that they cover a huge number of bodies, more by far than any other program.

Sirius also includes the excellent Matrix modules: the Day Watch astrology calendar and the Matrix Horizons astromaps, both really well-designed.

Sirius has a huge number of features, and many are pioneering and unique and make the program of value to many, many astrologers.

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