"Zane Stein obtained positions for the new solar systems from astronomy sources on the Internet. Right Ascension positions are here converted to Celestial Longitude (zodiac positions) courtesy of Rique Pottenger and Maritha Pottenger at Astro Communications Services in San Diego.

"Pop these new solar systems into horoscopes as you would any planet. Unlike our near planets, these far-aways will not move from these positions during a human lifespan. (*Precession about 1 degree in 72 years - Zane) You may, however, note transits, progressions, solar arc directions, tight angles etc. to these points. Let us hear your observations!

"Our solar system is no longer the whole ball o' wax. A "new worlds" order approaches. Keep staring into space!

"Zane Stein and I will be publishing more information on these phenomena shortly."

Not too long ago, she sent me this follow-up:

"Ordo Novum Seculorum...Talk about the New World Order! Got us three new solar systems in the shop here in just as many months, Danny boy, see how they glow! Nuthin' NEAR the like ever happened to Earth folk before, seems we were always the only solar system around this town...only one we ever needed, if you ask me!...and suddenly BANG! we got us a THANG hummin' and buzzin' over by the gate there, and we gotta DEAL with it, like it or not, and from what I been hearin', some of those astrolgoers don't like it one little bit.

"Some good ol' astrology boys been sayin' these new planets and solar systems out there are too far away to do anything much to earth people's horoscopes. But didn't them wild and crazy physics fellers find that the 'weak force' is the glue of the universe, and that the farther away a thing is, the stronger its effect? Aint' Pluto the pit bull of our solar system, meaner than a junkyard dog and farther away from our sweet Earth than Hell itself?

"I confess, my friends, I hardly know what to think about this new mess astrologers are going to have to handle now and worse to come: Other solar systems! New Planets! More comets! To think we astrologers used to be so back-woods-bigoted we wouldn't even study comets, till that sneaky maverick, Chiron, showed up in November '77. We didn't know it was a comet back in them days, figured it was a small planet, or somethin', an asteroid way off its path maybe. Zane Stein and Al Morrison launched a worldwide research and info pooling project to find out fast what Chiron might mean in horoscopes and in global events. And study it to death we did, finding it linked with healing, pregnancy, the Human Genome project, you name it, Zane Stein can tell you all about that. By the time in 1990 astronomers found out Chiron was a comet, a mere dirty snowball, astrologers had to confront a collective bias against studying anything outside the established old order.

"If horoscopes are 'frozen snapshots' of our solar system at a particular moment, and the art and language of astrology are based on the shape of our solar system, shall future horoscopes include symbols for other, faraway solar systems? Will horoscopes a hundred years from now be Earth centered or Sun centered, or centered round something else?"

OK, folks, what do you make of all this? Let us know!

As I said at the top of this page, here is a whole bunch of new information on our neighbors, stars with exoplanets. But for openers....note how the third one above, 70 Virginis, is conjunct Chiron's perihelion position!

The February 9, 1997 issue of The New York Times had a front page story on these bodies entitled "In a Golden Age of Discovery, Faraway Worlds Beckon" by John Noble Wilford. In this article, he mentioned that Dr. Michael Mayor and Dr. Didier Queloz announced to the world the discovery of the first of these star systems, 51 Pegasi, on Oct. 6, 1995 (although he did not mention how much earlier than that was the actual discovery date.) Check out the library for a copy of this article, or write to Debbi (above) and she will send you one.

I've been intrigued by these systems ever since Debbi first told me about them. Recently, I dug up an old issue of Astronomy (April 1996) which had a wonderful article entitled "2 New Solar Systems" by Robert Naeye. It was here that I learned that it was 1992 when "astronomers discovered the first planetary system beyond our own," and this system orbits a pulsar, "the collapsed remnant of an exploded star." But 51 Pegasi is the first intact star to have been discovered with at least one planet.

The article also said that the next two stars, 47 Ursae Majoris and 70 Virginis, are "close enough to be seen with the naked eye in a dark sky." Since a lot of astrologers, even those who use Tropical astrology, include some fixed stars in their charts, these two may already have been under research for many years. Did the 'coming in to awareness' of the the planets around these stars bring a change in our awareness about their effects on us?

As I mentioned above, a whole bunch of additional stars have been discovered with planetary systems, although a few of these may turn out to be brown dwarfs instead of planets. The one called Lalande is the closest distance to our system, only 8.25 light years. Here are a few astronomy links, for those of you interested in this aspect of the Exoplanets:

A list of confirmed Exoplanets can be found on the NASA Exoplanet Archive

Lots of new information about each individual new solar system

Here follows a list of those star systems on which I have been able to find both the discovery date, and the actual location of systems. The locations are listed in Right Ascension and Declination, as well as Zodical Longitude. Thanks to Diana K. Rosenberg for the accurate positions, as well as the descriptions of where each star falls in its constellation. Her site is an excellent place to explore the "Fixed Stars and Constellations". Thanks also to Juan Revilla for further precision. And to Anne Wright for information on the constellations themselves (Anne's comments given in quotations):