Image of the Milky Way from the Wave Farm, 2018

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

General Information

Who is Selestium Astrology?

Selestium Astrology is owned and run by Adriana Knouf, artist, writer, musician, and educator. She has decades of experience in higher education (teaching at the undergarduate and graduate level) as well as exhibiting her artwork internationally and beyond, including a work that has flown aboard the International Space Station. More about her can be read here.

Adriana is the sole proprietress, designer, developer, programmer, website designer, marketer, and support staff of Selestium Astrology.

Adriana is currently studying astrology through the courses of Athen Chimenti of Mastering the Zodiac and Chris Brennan’s Hellenistic Astrology course. Nevertheless, she has decades of experience in studying and working with astronomical phenomena (everything from astrophotography to the development of specualtive satellites to the teaching of workshops about how to use astrolabes) which all supports the development of the application.

Does Selestium Astrology also support tropical or sidereal zodiacs?

Yes! All of the standard tools for tropical and sidereal zodiacs are (or will be) present in the software. In fact, I am very interested, as a research question, in combining traditional, Helenistic or medieval techniques with constellational sidereal approaches. As well, you will find interesting things like a Hellenistic (sign-based) aspect analysis, support for various decans and terms, and, in future versions, full support for techniques like zodiacal releasing, firdaria, and so on.

Why do we need another desktop astrology application?

Much of the rationale can be found in the manifesto. But simply put: no desktop astrology software on the market right now is or was designed, from the ground-up, to support constellational sidereal astrology. Selestium Astrology has been. I started writing the software due to some of my frustrations with other applications, as outlined in the manifesto. As a result, all of the processing in the program are responsive to constellational sidereal zodiacs. So, if you have a constellational sidereal zodiac set as your default, that choice will be respected everywhere: in the calculation of graphic and tabular ephemerides, in the calculation of daily positions, in the calculation of ingress searches, and so on and so on. No other software (that I am aware of) supports this.

As well, Selestium Astrology additionally supports the custom definition of zodiacs of any size and number. This can be especially useful in both historical astrological research, as well as the potential definition of new zodiacs and boundaries for the future.

Finally, Selestium Astrology is one of the few open-source desktop astrology programs (licensed under the AGPLv3, and the only one, to my knowledge, that supports constellational sidereal astrology. This means that you will always have open access to your data and, if I ever am unable to continue supporting the software for any reason, someone else can easily take over, meaning that you data, your livelihood, is never locked-in to any particular vendor.

If the software is open source, why do I have to pay to download the program?

When most people hear “open source software” they assume that the program itself does not cost anything. This is not always the case. In open source software we can think of the “free software” idea as “free as in speech” (that is, if you have the source, you can do anything with the software that is allowed by the license), but not “free as in beer” (that is, you can’t just get the runable program for free). Think of the source code as the blueprints to the building. The blueprints are not the building itself.

So for Selestium Astrology I allow anyone to download the source code for free and use it and modify it according to the AGPLv3 license. But, if you are not an experienced software developer, you will not be able to just “run” the source code. I thus sell a downloadable file that can install the program on Windows, MacOS, and Linux. Making these downloadable files is not trivial. And the fee for the downloadable, runable files helps support the development of the software, while being true to my ethos of contributing back to the community through releasing the source code of Selestium Astrology.

Will Selestium Astrology run on a mobile device?

Unfortunately not. I have designed and programmed it for desktop operating systems only (Windows, MacOS, Linux). Mobile operating systems (Android, iOS) have numerous restrictions, both now and proposed for the future, that are increasingly making them incompatible with software freedom. I don’t want to spend my limited time on this planet frustrated with arbitrary restrictions. (I say this as someone who has programmed for Android and iOS in the past, before things became extremely locked-down).

Why write a desktop application when everything is web-based today?

Not everything can or should be done on the web. 2) I remember a time before web apps and there may be a time in the future when the web is not as available as it is today.

More directly: I belive very strongly in software freedom and data sovereignty. When you chose to upload your private information to a website that is not owned by you (and, sometimes, even when it is owned by you), you are explicitly trusting that website owner and/or service provider to be the custodian of your data. What happens if they do something nefarious with it? What happens if the website disappears? What happens to all of your data, then? By having everything on your own machine, you become the custodian of the data. When we are dealing with people’s most intimate aspects of their lives–their natal charts and our notes about them–it behooves us to take care of this information extremely carefully. I believe that is best down on your own machines where the data is stored locally and never sent over a network.

Additionally, we all-too-often assume constant, instantaneous access to the web. Will this always be the case, for the future? That’s not a given. That’s not even the reality in many places around the around–and even in places that are part of the “Global North”. We cannot and should not assume constant internet access. As such, I have endeavored to make Selestium Astrology a completely offline application. All of the data to compute charts–from the Swiss Ephemeris data files, to the timezone databases, to the location database–is stored locally. No information, for example, has to be sent to another provider (such as Google) to lookup a location. Everything can be done without an Internet connection.

A lot of these ideas, and others, that have informed the develop of the program come from permacomputing principles, and I encourate you to read about them more if you’re interested.

How do you verify the results of your calculations?

All results are compared with industry standard programs, such as swetest, Astrodienst, astro-seek, and other online and offline programs.

Software Information

What is the difference between the “Community Edition” and the “Supporter Edition”?

Given that Selestium Astrology is free software, it is entirely possible to download the source code and run it yourself. If you do this, you are running the “Community Edition” (CE) of the software.

If you purchase a license to the software from this website, and download an installer from here, you are running the “Supporter Edition” (SE) of the software.

The features matrix provides details on the differences between the editions. Basically, SE allows you to remove the watermark that is present on the chart, as well as enter in “compliments of” for charts and reports. It also provides you with support and access (in terms of asking questions) to the support forum. My rationale here is that if you are using Selestium Astrology in a professional, consulting capacity, you will want to remove the watermark and provide your own compliments, as well as receive support. If so, then purchasing a license (which also goes to supporting the devleopment of the software) makes sense to me.

CE users cannot expect support from myself or others. Any support will be provided on an as-available basis.

(Given that Selestium Astrology is free software, it’s also possible for others to download the software and provide compiled installers for others to use. If the software is installed in this way, it is still considered a CE and cannot expect support from me.)

If you are confused by any of this, please feel free to reach out and ask questions at asknouf@selestium.net.

How much will a license cost? Is it a subscription?

Cost will be determined, but will be competitive with other astrology programs (online and off) based on features.
No! I don’t believe in, nor like, subscription-based services. In the long-run they end up costing a lot more than a one-time purchase. As well, if the license server goes down, or the company disappears or goes bankrupt, you may be completely unable to use the software. (See my comments about this in the manifesto.) This should never be the case in software that is needed for your livelihood (or for any software, for that matter). While this may result in lower revenue than if I required a subscription, I believe it is the ethical thing to do.

Is Selestium Astrology currently available for purchase?

Not yet! The software is still under active development. An alpha version will be available before the spring equinox 2026. If you are interested in being a tester of the software (in exchange for receiving a free license for the software for all upgrades up to version 1), please reach out. You’ll need to provide some feedback of the software in order to be considered for this program.

I aim to offer Selestium Astrology for purchase by the general public by the summer solstice 2026.

Does Selestium Astrology support dark mode?

Yes! Selestium Astrology is one of the few desktop applications that supports a dark mode (and is responsive to your own mode settings in your operating system). As well, it’s possible to adjust the colors of the chart so that it is drawn in a dark mode as well.

Does Selestium Astrology support screen readers and/or assistive technologies?

Yes! I have developed the software using the industry standard Qt graphics framework. Each interface element is accessible using the keyboard alone: it is possible to generate charts, do all of the calculations, move through things dynamically, etc, without using the mouse.

As well, I am adding assistive information to as many interface elements as possible, which provide additional context. I am not a daily-user of screen readers myself, and thus I imagine there are additional things which can be added to help support assistive technology users. Please reach out if you have any questions or concerns or suggestions for improvement.

Where can I download the Selestium Astrology source code?

The code is stored in the Selestium Astrology Gitlab repository and is licensed under the AGPLv3. You can also report any bugs there as well. Other aspects of the code are released under their respective licenses; information about that can be found in the repository.

I’m LGBTQIA+ and/or BIPOC and/or living in the Global South and can’t afford a license. Do you provide any discounts?

Yes! Please reach out to asknouf@selestium.net and let’s talk.

What are the system requirements?

It’s a bit difficult to state them explicitly. I can confirm that it runs extremely smoothly on:

A Windows 10 i7 laptop from 2021
A Windows 10 i7 laptop from 2023
An Ubuntu 24.04 virtual machine with 8GB of RAM allocated
A Macbook Pro from 2018 running MacOS Ventura
A Macbook Air M1 from 2021 running MacOS Sequoia

The program uses around 250 MB of memory. Its highest CPU usage is when running a fast dynamical animation with all 1000 stars being shown in the star ring, where it climbs to 15%. At idle it runs at 0%.

Further Information

How can I keep updated with new developments?

Thanks for your interest! You can subscribe to our low-volume newsletter here.

How else can I support the ethos of the project?

While Selestium Astrology is ultimately a paid program, I hope that people support the fact that I have released it under an open-source license. This is a risk from a business and financial perspective, but one I am willing to take. If you would like to support further developments of the program, which will always be released as open source, I definitely appreciate donations via Ko-Fi.

Additionally, you can do the following: