I wanted to check out a theory that says that the planet with the highest elevation in a chart is raised above his opponents. The question looks at the difference between the South point and the nonagesimal.

As the snapshot from WinStars shows, Mars on the nonagesimal is higher in the sky than Saturn at the moment the Eurovision 2010 final starts. This is in addition to Mars being in his own essential dignities, while Saturn has none.
Here is another snapshot, just to get the right picture:
I am not sure whether Saturn should be reckoned as peregrine in Virgo - probably not since he shares the same powers as the sign, both are cold and dry. Mars is in Leo, a sign that agrees with his natural powers, and he is in his own face and terms.

I wanted to check out a theory that says that the planet with the highest elevation in a chart is raised above his opponents.

Excellent idea! If that appear to be true we could use this method in another contests!!

We also have to give some thought to the implications of such a thesis. The South lifts a planet to it's higher elevation, but could the nonagesimal stille retain a competitive advantage? There is the need to think out what this means in terms of combining or choosing between quadrant and equal house systems.

I am not such expert so I can not help you. Hope you will resolve that "enigma" so I can learn from you what to do in future.

There is a humorous clip on net where Germany's Lena Meyer-Landrut compares Safura to a monster. http://wiwibloggs.com/2010/05/germanys- ... a-monster/
This is meant in the spirit of good fun, but there is something here that relates to the appearances of Saturn, who we must remember is stationary. A stationary planet may indicate someone who will attempt 'to bite over more than he can chew'.

The first semi-final goes today. Serbia seem to be doing reasonable well on the polls and could win that place in the final. Good luck, Goca!

Thanks Andrew, you are very kind!
It will be really surprised for me if he made it, because my chart about Serbian singer and his enter to final has contradictory testimonies... (may be it is all about of my natal conjunction Me and Sa...) .

Bottom line, I can see no disrupting planet and believe Mian Stankovic should stand a fair chance for the final.

And yes, he did it!!! You are really expert !!Congratulations!
And congratulations to your country too for excellent oranization of this fantastic show!

Congratulations also to Serbia!!
Well delivered!

Andrew Bevan wrote:I wanted to check out a theory that says that the planet with the highest elevation in a chart is raised above his opponents. The question looks at the difference between the South point and the nonagesimal.

This inspired me to calculate the positions from the horizontal reference point of view, or the so called horizon house system.
This is technologically the same as Campanus but instead of the poles of the coordinate system in the north-south axis the poles of the Horizon system are 'tilted' 90? 'downwards' along the n-s meridian to the zenith-nadir axis. The prime vertical determines the cusps of I and VII, and don't necessarily coincide with the ascendant. These cusps are rather on the Vertex-Antivertex axis, relatively modern (early 20th century) points.
Like the house systems on in polar regions get some strange features, this system gets strange features in the tropical regions. So like the 'normal' house systems I also have doubt about the use of this system.

However there is something very attractive about this system. It shows how the sky looks like in the most natural way we humans look at it. Azimuth and Altitude: around the horizon and in height, where other reference planes like equatorial and even more ecliptical are further away from our immediate perception.

Height may indeed be something useful to use in delineation. Houses or direction, east, south etc. are also used in the 'astrological compass', related to astrocartography. For example in the birth chart if you have Venus in the South and Paris lies in that same line then you could get a Venus experiences in Paris like a love affair . Enough to examinate.

Anyhow, here are the positions the '_'s are to make the table overviewable since multiple spaces don't show in postings and the text get squeezed.

Planet___Hor.pos.____Altitude
Sun_____21?21? __V____6?31?
Moon___14?56? _XII__-19?45?
Mercury__9?09? ___V_-10?42?
Venus___25?19?__VI__26?11?
Mars____16?06?_VIII__37?58?
Jupiter___26?05?__III_-31?31?
Saturn___25?26?__IX__33?07?
Uranus___27?08?__III_-30?44?
Neptune__19?53?__II__-36?58?
Pluto_____22?29?_XII_-16?46?
Chiron___21?59?___II_-31?04?
NNode___26?49?___I__-24?51?
Asc._____18?08?__XI___0?

Height of nonagesimal point is 36?32' and obviously 90? before the horizontal house position of the Ascendant, thus in 18?08' VII.
If the planets from the different directions indicate some qualities from the countries then one could compare the types of songs with the planets. Mars with an active song with 'beat', Venus with love song etc. If these coincide with the songs that the coinciding countries from those directions have, perhaps there's some relation in winning the festival. But here I'm speculating a bit, I can't say for sure if this is correct.

So glad you picked up on that, Eddy. Very impressive work indeed!

The Winstar planetarium actually has a function that calculates the altitude of the different planets. To find the information, when running the program click the tag called 'Observation', then 'Planets and moons'. Next select the object you want to look up and then a window opens with all the astronomical information.

I notice Winstars says Mars has an altitude of 37?54' - while you are dead-on with Saturn 33?06'. This caused me to check latitudes. Mars is 1N27, while Saturn has 2N26. Really, I can't expalin why your figures differ, but your feedback and hard work is very encouraging. I am intrigued.

The data I started with are from www.ephemeris.com

Date/Time: 2010.05.29 19:00:00 UTC (GMT - Delta T), JD = 2455346.291667
Sidereal Time: 11:28:47, Delta T = 70.0 seconds
Geocentric positions

Phase of Moon: 0.561 (0.000=New; 0.250=First 1/4; 0.500=Full; 0.750=Last 1/4)

Planet Longitude Latitude Right Asc. Declination
Sun 08 Gem 18'03" - 0?00'00" 04:26:13 21?41'22"
Moon 00 Cap 08'26" - 1?05'21" 18:00:37 -24?31'39"
Mercury 13 Tau 45'04" - 3?19'11" 02:49:15 12?47'44"
Venus 11 Cnc 37'43" 1?49'07" 06:51:16 24?44'28"
Mars 25 Leo 40'25" 1?27'00" 09:53:45 14?19'35"
Jupiter 28 Psc 55'19" - 1?08'30" 23:57:52 - 1?28'35"
Saturn 27 Vir 50'00"R 2?26'03" 11:55:55 3?05'42"
Uranus 00 Ari 03'01" - 0?44'18" 00:01:22 - 0?39'27"
Neptune 28 Aqr 42'05" - 0?27'27" 22:04:02 -12?21'16"
Pluto 04 Cap 46'16"R 5?09'13" 18:20:01 -18?12'07"
Chiron 00 Psc 58'33" 6?11'18" 22:03:17 - 5?20'02"
Node 12 Cap 11'56"R 0?00'00" 18:53:02 -22?52'43"
Sorry for the messy look, this is how it looks like if you don't use the '__'s between the numbers.

As you can see there are some slight differences from the list in your initial post Andrew. Perhaps I made some rounding off errors, but the differences aren't too big (nor for the other planets I hope). I needed the Right Ascension/Declination list. The accuracy in RA (converted to degrees) was 0?0'15".

Right Ascension is expressed in hours minutes just like Sidereal Time. ST for location, I got (converted to degrees) 182?48'45". As MC/Meridian in house measurement is similar to 270?, I add (270?-182?48'45"=) 87.1875? to the RA positions (in degrees) of the planets. So I get the positions according to the Meridian house system (the declination remains the same value).

Then convert to horizon house system with the same formulae for other conversion systems of coordinate systems:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecliptic_c ... te_systems

Instead of ? =23.5 in those formulae I used 30.1 (which is 90?-59?54'Oslo latitude). Looking at the East the intersection of Equatorial to Horizontal resembles Equatorial to Ecliptical, so I used the second formulae in wikipedia: Conversion from equatorial coordinates to ecliptic coordinates.

And so on. It takes a while playing with a calculator, but it brings greaqt satisfaction. Just try it several times.

On the astrodienst chart services there is a similar thing but it doesn't give the positions in a list, only the pictures. http://www.astro.com/cgi/chart.cgi?btyp=w2at&rs=3 and then 'Extended chart selection' http://www.astro.com/cgi/genchart.cgi then choose under 'Pullen/Astrolog' for 'Local horizon chart (polar coord.)'.

http://www.fourmilab.ch/ then go to 'Your Sky' also have star maps including Azimuth and Altitude, just noted in a different way (distance from Meridian, before/after) and in decimals after the point.

Altitude Azimuth
Sun 6.518 122.997 Up
Mercury 10.706 140.856 Set
Venus 26.182 94.690 Up
Moon 19.749 74.920 Set
Mars 37.962 43.934 Up
Jupiter 31.519 176.076 Set
Saturn 9.133 33.118 4.567 Up
Uranus 30.726 177.126 Set
Neptune 36.975 139.884 Set
Pluto 16.691 82.350 Set

Here also mine are slightly different, but not disturbing I think, max. about several arc minutes.
These programs are quite useful since when I for example did inverse cosine to get the final result of the Azimuth I got 7?31' for Pluto but in fact it is 360?-7?31' = 359?29'. Cosine of both give the same result so inverse cosine you'll have to watch out which is the correct one.

This calculating is quite fun, I can advise everyone to try it from time to time. It gives great satisfaction and more understanding of the maths behind astrology. And it's really not too difficult, it's rather a part of the brain that needs to be (re)stimulated: practice, patience and perseverance are needed .

I'm surprised no one has mentioned France. Scorpio rising with Mars/Leo/10th in own bounds (terms). Leo is the the significator of France in mundane astrology. I haven't followed Eurovision so I don't know who the bookies favourites are or what the odds for France are but if the chart you have posted is correct I would certainly expect a strong showing from France.

Edit: My local bookies has 50/1 odds for France. Others have 33/1 up to 100/1.