New Planet

With the considerable improvements of telescopes in the second half of the 20th century astronomers have managed to get a much clearer picture of our solar system, which has led to the discovery of a number of celestial bodies, including the following:

• the asteroid belt. This is a ring of asteroids whose orbit around the Sun is located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Ceres, Pallas, Juno and Vesta were the first discovered ones, in the 19th century.

• the centaurs. This is a group of celestial bodies that fit into a category somewhere between the asteroids and comets. Chiron was the first centaur to be discovered on 1st November 1977. Since then, 18 further centaurs have been discovered although only a few have been named after Greek centaurs, including Pholus and Nessus. Their eccentric orbits are located between those of Saturn and Neptune.

• The Kuiper Belt. This is a ring of an estimated several thousand asteroids beyond the orbits of Neptune. Only a few dozen individual ones have been identified. Much still remains to be discovered about the Kuiper Belt which was only discovered in the 1990s.

There has been a restrained reaction from most astrologers to these astronomical discoveries. On the one hand, many fear that adding yet more planets to the existing astrological system will lead to losing sight of the essential horoscope factors, and on the other hand, there is still very little known about most of these new planets.

The situation is different with Chiron. More and more astrologers incorporate it into their astrological work. In addition, a book about Pholus already exists and investigations into Nessus have have yielded their first results. It still remains to be seen whether the centaurs turn out to be a temporary phenomenon or whether they will eventually become established as permanent astrological factors.