Media planetary alignments This astrolatric and superstitious frenzy touched the highest peaks of the French state. Thus, in an article published on 6th January 2017 in the business magazine Les Échos, of course titled “Should we fear the end of the alignment of the planets?”, can we read the following sentences: “It was in 2015. François Hollande congratulated himself on a perfect “alignment of (...)

Astronomical definition The Moon’s orbit is not circular, but elliptical. Unlike a circle which has only one, an ellipse has two homes F1 and F2 being equidistant on either side of the center of the ellipse. In its course around the Earth, the Moon passes through two extreme points of its orbit: ▶ the perigee: the Moon is then closest to the Earth ▶ the apogee: the Moon is then farthest (...)

A drop of solar water in the cosmic ocean To begin, let’s locate the solar system within the cosmos. The cosmos is made up of billions of billions of stars, that is to say bodies that shine with their own light. Due to the laws of universal gravitation, every celestial body revolves around another. These stars thus group together in galaxies, and revolve around the center of these galaxies. (...)

These ten videos represent the geocentric cycles of the Sun, the Moon and the planets. The ecliptic is the plane of the Sun’s apparent orbit around the Earth. The trajectories of the Moon and the planets are carried out on orbits more or less inclined on the ecliptic plane. In this ecliptic frame of reference, a planet is thus characterized by two coordinates: its ecliptic longitude (...)

The astronomical phenomenon of retrogradation The apparent motion of a planet results from the interaction between its real motion and that of the Earth. Demotions are therefore not “optical illusions”: they are induced by the different angular velocities of the Earth and the planet. As Jean-Pierre Nicola points out, “a little astrometry and kinematics is enough to understand the inseparability (...)

You will find a detailed presentation of the main physical characteristics of the Sun, the Moon and the Planets of the solar system in this section dedicated to them. Note that in astrology, we group under the term “Planets” (with a capital ‘P’) both the Sun, the Moon and the planets that revolve around the Sun. The use of this word with a capital letter does not mean that astrologers are unaware (...)