Solar Fire 2
The Standard Edition, $150

A truly hassle-free calculation program for Windows, features easy data entry and big, bold charts that are as readable on the screen as they are in printouts. And that is only the beginning of the magic you can create with Solar Fire!

Here's what the reviewers and users say:

• Easiest data entry: Type in dates and times using the bare minimum of keystrokes. Select a city, and the longitude, latitude and current standard time zone fill in automatically. Click “ok,” and the chart is done.
  Solar Fire’s free, built-in, user-expandable place database covers 3,000 world cities and current standard time zones. Solar Fire 2 also works seamlessly with the ACS PC Atlas which gives the clock-setting history for over 252,000 places in the world.
  
• Easiest chart retrieval: Just click on the chart’s name. You can also import charts cast by Blue*Star, QuickCharts, CCRS 92 or any Nova System program.
  
• Easiest selection of options: Click on the menu bar to see a wide variety of chart wheels, aspectarians and listings. You can read these from the screen, make printouts, or do both, simply by clicking on your choices.
  
• Easiest readability: Large, bold color-coded glyphs and the maximum resolution of your screen and printer make for charts of outstanding elegance and clarity. The on-screen charts with a white background look just like the printouts and are equally easy to read.
  

• Great for forecasting: A remarkably complete and easy-to-use transit, progression and direction listing (including precession-corrected and converse).
  
• Investigate new techniques: Midpoint sorts, trees and axis listings. Helio and sidereal charts, planetary and asteroid returns, a rectification assist, lmt time input, “3-D” aspects, and more.
  
• It even helps you read the chart: To top things off, you can click on any item in the chart to see its meaning displayed on the screen. You can also send the delineations to your word processor where you can edit, format and print a 20-page report on each chart! You can use SF's excellent delineations, or write your own.
  
• Esoteric astrology: Solar Fire includes the hypothetical planet Vulcan, and esoteric and hierarchical rulerships as set out in the books of Alice Bailey. Version 2 adds delineations relating to the Seven Rays.
  
• Built-in DTP capability: Click the “Copy” button to send any wheel, grid or listing to the Windows clipboard to retrieve for use in DTP programs. Version 2 allows not just one chart in the clipboard at a time, but as many as you like.
  
• Do it your way: Set the program to start up with your favorite houses, calculations and other features already selected. Choose your own colors, fonts, aspects, and points to include. Select equal or proportional wheels, with or without aspect lines, and add your own name and address to the printouts.
  
• Use Solar Fire charts in other programs, too: Solar Fire is so pleasant to use, you may want to cast all your charts with it. Handily, Solar Fire 2 charts can be exported for use in CCRS 92, and any program in the Nova system including the Astrolabe Report System. You can also import Solar Fire 2 charts for use in JigSaw, Solar Maps and Solar Writer. This gives you access to dozens of additional techniques, all from one input of birth data.
  

• Chart calculations: Natal. Progressed with solar arc or quotidian 2 MC (“daily houses”). Solar-arc-directed. Solar, lunar, planet and asteroid returns (full, demi, etc.). Harmonic. Antiscion. Contra-antiscion. Composite (of up to 15 charts, with midpoint or Ascendant-derived houses). Davison relationship charts (time/space midpoint). Astro-clock. Precession-corrected and converse options.
  
• Wheels and aspectarians: Single and double wheels (proportional or equal-sized houses, with or without aspect lines). Concentric bi-, tri- and quadri-wheels. Natal and synastry aspect grids with orb and whether applying or separating; natal grid have parallels and contraparallels also. Wheel and grid printouts have six 29-character lines for your address or business message.
  
• Chart listings: For one or two charts at a time: Basic longitudes, latitudes, declinations, right ascensions, daily travel, lunar angle and phase, and a now user-definable element/mode tally. Aspect list. Aspect analysis with aspect distribution, fre-quency analysis, and patterns such as unaspected planets, stelliums, grand crosses, etc. User-definable dignities/rulerships (modern, ancient, esoteric or hierarchical). Chart points, midpoints, midpoint axes or trees sorted in any modulus.
  
• Transit and progression lists: Transits to natal, transiting, progressed and solar-arc-directed positions. Progressions to natal and progressed positions. Solar arc to natal. Can include house and sign ingresses, parallels of declination or latitude, station points, eclipses, entering and leaving orb hits; regular, precessed or converse. You can choose period covered, points included, natal vs. relocated, and how to sort the lists.
  
• Zodiacs: Tropical, any sidereal, precession-corrected.
  
• Coordinates: Geo and heliocentric. Helio charts can appear next to geo charts in bi- or double wheels, synastry grids, and dual-chart listings. Declinations and latitudes appear in basic chart details listing and can be included in dynamic listings; declination aspects appear in aspect grid.
  
• House systems: Placidus, Koch, Campanus, Merid-ian, Morinus, Porphyry, Regiomontanus, Topo- centric, Whole Signs, Hindu Bhava, and equal from any point including 0° Aries, 0° of Sun sign, and equal with MC on the 10th. Houses can be calculated for geographic or geocentric latitude.
  
• Points included: Sun through Pluto; mean or true lunar North and South Nodes; Chiron, Ceres, Pallas, Juno, Vesta, Hygeia and Astraea; Vulcan; Asc, MC, East Point, Vertex, Part of Fortune.
  
• Calculation span: Asteroids AD 1800-2050; other points unlimited.
  
• Aspects: 26 aspect types are available, each with its own glyph, color code and applying and separating orb. You can select different orbs for the luminaries vs. other points, and different orbs for natal, transiting and progressed use. You can include points in the chart without including aspects to them. You can also experiment with “3-D” or true-body aspects (measured along the great circle between any two points).