Astrolium's Dials module is the cosmobiology workspace: a dial you turn, a readout that tells you exactly where the axis stands, and a list of planetary pictures ranked by how tight they are. Natal, solar arc and transit sit on the same ring. Dials is included with the $11 per month Pro plan; see pricing.
For the standalone midpoint arithmetic, run the midpoint calculator. For the school the dial comes out of, read the Uranian astrology guide. For the directed layer on its own, see solar arc directions.
What an axis-first dial means
Cosmobiology is a subtractive tradition. Reinhold Ebertin stripped the chart down to 13 factors and read the midpoints between them, on the theory that a planetary picture carries more information than a lone aspect. The 90° dial folds the four cardinal signs onto one another so that conjunctions, squares and oppositions collapse into a single contact. What you are left with is a ring, a pointer, and a question about orb.
That is the shape the module follows. Nothing about it is a table with a chart beside it.
The axis
The pointer is the instrument. In Astrolium it has a numeric readout you can type into, a pair of nudge controls that move it one arcminute at a time, and a Shift modifier that moves it a full degree. Arrow keys work the same way once the dial has focus.
Two further controls matter more than they sound.
Prev and next factor jump the axis to the next body in dial order. Stepping through all 13 in sequence is exactly what a midpoint tree is, assembled one screen at a time instead of printed as a wall.
World axis parks the pointer on a cardinal zero and carries a live count of what is standing there. The control is deliberately named world axis rather than Aries point, since calling 0° Capricorn the Aries point is the kind of label a Uranian practitioner screenshots. On the 45° dial the control is hidden, because a parked axis there also collects degrees around 0° Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius, which are not world points at all.
The axis opens on the densest cluster in the chart rather than at zero. The first screen carries structure.
Orb is the ranking, not a footnote
Rows come back ordered by orb, tightest first, with no alternative sort. Four tabs slice the same data: Hits (what is within orb of the axis right now), Midpoints, Factors, and All.
A picture's orb is measured between the factor and the midpoint it stands on, not between each side and the pointer. That distinction changes the number on screen. For ♅ = ♃/MC the quantity a practitioner reads is Uranus-to-midpoint, and that is what Astrolium prints.
Two orbs, because they are not the same quantity
Natal midpoint contacts default to 1°00'. Directed contacts default to 0°30'.
The reason is arithmetic rather than taste. Solar arc advances about a degree per year, so orb on a directed contact is a time window: 0°30' reads as roughly six months either side of exact, and 1°00' would quietly present a two-year span as though it were a hit. Transits get their own orb again, because a transiting Moon crosses half a degree in about an hour and Uranus near station takes around 41 days to do the same thing. One shared number cannot serve all three.
Directed rows print their timing as a month, for example exact in about five months. Transit rows date to the day, which is what the technique supports.
Three layers, one ring
- Natal. Always on. The midpoints derive from it, so it cannot be switched off into an empty screen.
- Solar arc. On by default at the current year. A cross-layer row names both ends, so
SA ASC = ☽/♆says plainly which side is directed. - Transit. Eleven factors, Sun through Pluto plus the Node. Transiting Ascendant and Midheaven are omitted on doctrine: both circle the zodiac daily and a contact to either says nothing durable.
Solar arc and transits are the two halves of cosmobiology's predictive method. Solar arc tells you the year, transits tell you the day, and the module refuses to ship one without the other.
The graphic ephemeris panel
Ebertin's graphic ephemeris lives in the same screen, collapsed until you open it. The panel follows whichever dial you are on, 90°, 45° or 360°, and draws that modulus forward from today across a window of one to 36 months, with eleven bodies plotted: Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, the Mean Node and Chiron. Show Moon adds a twelfth on windows of three months or less.
An About this chart disclosure sits under the panel and states what the drawing cannot do. The window always starts today, so there is no past-year review. There are no natal Ascendant or Midheaven lines. Where natal labels crowd the right margin some are dropped, though the line is still drawn. On a sidereal chart the crossings remain correct; only the cardinal, fixed and mutable bands on the 90° view are labelled for the tropical zodiac.
We would rather print that list than let a practitioner assume a capability the panel does not have.
Ask AI, one row at a time
Every row carries an Ask AI button. Four presets cover the common asks: explain this planetary picture, interpret this structure, compare with solar arc, find strongest configurations. The solar-arc comparison preset is hidden whenever the directed layer is off, so the model is never invited to compare against data it was not handed.
Coming in from the natal wheel
Turn on the midpoint layer in the natal chart workspace, select a structure, and the inspector offers Explore in Dials. The axis arrives already parked on that midpoint. For practitioners who read the wheel first, that handoff is usually how the module gets opened at all.
Cross-link
For midpoint arithmetic without the workspace, use the midpoint calculator. For the tradition behind the 90° dial, read the Uranian astrology guide. For solar arc as its own technique, see solar arc directions and predictive timing. For the daily positions table that hosts the same graphic ephemeris panel, see the ephemeris tool.