Local Space Map Calculator — Your Birth Sky as a Compass Rose

What a local space map is

House systems slice the sky by time and ascendant; local space throws away the clock and keeps only direction. Each planet in your natal chart is projected onto the horizon of your birthplace as a plain compass bearing — the azimuth it stood at (or would have stood at, had it been below the horizon) at your birth instant, plus its altitude above or below that horizon.

The technique, developed by Geoffrey Cornelius and others from the oldest pre-horary traditions, reads those bearings as a landscape: the street heading toward your natal Jupiter is 'Jupiter's direction' from your home. It is the cousin of astrocartography done at walking scale — no world map, just your local geography keyed to your birth sky.

How we compute it

From the birth instant we take the true geocentric position of each body on the sub-arcsecond astronomy (VSOP87/ELP via astronomy-engine), convert to right ascension and declination for that moment, and transform into the horizontal coordinate system of your chosen standing place with the standard azimuth/altitude formulas, applying normal atmospheric refraction near the horizon.

The output is pure spherical astronomy: an azimuth measured clockwise from true north (not magnetic — no declination correction is applied, so compare against true-north maps) and an altitude. Change the standing place and every bearing shifts, because directions are relative to where you observe from — exactly as the tradition intends.

What you get

After entering your birth data:

• A compass rose with all ten bodies plotted by azimuth — gold inside the ring if they were above the horizon at your birth, dimmed outside if below.
• A table pairing each planet with its sixteen-point bearing (E, SSE, WNW…), its exact azimuth to a tenth of a degree, its altitude, and its natal sign.
• An optional standing place: point the map from any city you live in instead of your birthplace.
• The above/below-horizon split — tradition treats 'above' planets as visible, public themes and 'below' ones as private.

How the directions are used

In the local-space reading each planet names a sector of your surroundings: the road heading 101° from your home sits in your Sun's direction, so errands, gyms or cafés along that line are 'solar' territory; Venus at 159° marks a sector for beauty and sociability, Saturn a sober one. Above-horizon planets are read as outward-facing directions you can use openly; below-horizon ones as behind-the-scenes support.

Practitioners use it for small, concrete choices — which direction to walk for a leisurely afternoon, which side of town to put a celebration — precisely because it makes no large claims. It is the lightest-touch of the locational techniques: compass geometry first, folklore a respectful second.

A worked example, with real numbers

Take a chart cast for 5 May 1990, 9:15 a.m. New York local time (13:15 UTC), projected from Manhattan at the birth instant. The Sun stood at azimuth 101.0° — almost due east — and high, +37.3° above the horizon; Mercury just beside it at 103.6° ESE, +38.7°. The under-horizon half tells a different story: the Moon hung far below the northern horizon at 346.1° NNW (−51.2°), and Pluto at 289.1° WNW (−22.3°).

The public directions from that doorstep, then, fan from the SSE–S arc — Venus at 159.2° (+46.7°), Mars due-ish south at 186.3° (+40.1°) — with Jupiter 59.3° ENE at only +1.2°, caught at the moment of rising, and Saturn SW at 227.7° (+12.6°). Every bearing is measurable astronomy; calling a southeasterly street 'Venus's direction' is the interpretive step, offered as such.

What this tool does not claim

Local space direction assigns meaning to compass bearings; there is no controlled evidence that living toward a natal planet's azimuth affects outcomes, and we present the framework as a modern revival of a pre-horary tradition, not physics. The azimuths themselves are exact and independently checkable.

Bearings are true-north, so a compass (magnetic) needs local declination to match them, and they depend on your birth time to the minute for the rising-side planets. All computation runs in your browser; no birth data leaves your device.

Local space vs astrocartography vs relocation

Astrocartography draws planetary lines across the whole Earth — relocation-scale geography. A relocation chart re-divides your twelve houses for a new city. Local space is the walking-scale version: no lines, no houses, just directions radiating from wherever you stand today. The three complement rather than compete: map first with astrocartography, re-house with the relocation tool, then orient day-to-day with this one. Because all three run on the same ephemeris, they never disagree on the astronomy — only on the scale and the metaphor.

Our method in one line

Geocentric ephemeris positions from sub-arcsecond astronomy (VSOP87/ELP via astronomy-engine) converted to refraction-corrected azimuth/altitude for your chosen horizon. Reviewed by Dr. Amara Osei, Astronomy Reviewer.