Each issue of Astro*Talk will include tips on current astrology programs. If you've discovered any special tips or tricks to get the most out of your software please contact stephanie@thenewage.com

Program:   Win*Star and Win*Star Plus

Win*Star Tips by Tom Goyett

Here are a couple of new Win*Star tips:

One of the more powerful features of Win*Star is its ability to do searches for aspects. There are a number of aspect sets that can be done by the powerful search engine of Win*Star. Transit to Transit, Transit to Natal, Progressed to Natal, Transits to Progressed, Directions to Natal and Progressed to Progressed.

These "hit" lists can be created with all the points included and then you can use the filtering tools to see only the information that you want to see on the screen or on paper when you choose to print. That will be the focus of this tip how to use those filters.

First of all, the things you can do with filters. Here is a list of a few of the filters available in the Win*Star program.

Date: You can do a search for a year and then only look at two weeks worth of hits with this filter. Specify the beginning and ending times and you will be set.

Aspecting planets: In the search definition screen this corresponds to the top selection panel. In a transit to natal search this will be the transiting planets. Remember that in this filter you can keep adding planets to the list. If you start out looking for Venus and want to include Mars in your list then you just select Mars the second time and it will add that to the list of planets seen on the screen

Target planets: This is the second set of planets in the search defination and these would correspond to the natal planets in the natal to transit search. This works like the aspecting planets you could see the transits of the Sun to both natal Venus and Mars by first selecting Venus and then Mars. You may also choose a specific date range before selecting either the aspecting or target planets.

Aspects: You may have selected a large set of aspects in your search such as complete or custom, and now may only want to look at the squares or oppositions. Just select one then the other and you'll only see those aspects. This will work for a previously filtered list or the whole file.

Search Type: You may have chosen transit to transit and transit to natal in your search defination and now you only want to look at the transiting to natal aspects. You can choose which one from the types of searches you have made.

Sign Ingress: This one will only show when a planet has entered a new sign. Remember. If you're creating the defination for the search and you have selected the transit to transit and the transit to natal searches, you should only select the events in one of the search definations. If you pick planet ingresses in both the transit to transit and the transit to natal then that will be duplicated in your hit list.

House Ingress: This can be selected as an event only from the transit to natal search defination and it will allow you to know when a transiting planet enters a natal house.

Lunations: New and full moons this is a nice one if you are at all interested in mundane astrology.

Stations: Whenever a planet stops or starts in the sky, it's listed here.

Hide Lunar Aspects: This is a very useful one. If you select the Moon in your search and then want to see a bigger picture, you can hide the moon for a while, see a specific period, then do a date filter and see the lunar aspects for a specific period of time.

Hide Inner planets is another nice filter. It will hide the lunar aspects as well as all of the inner planets. You see only from Jupiter on out with this one.

Exact Only: If you have chosen enter and leaving as an event you can then turn that off with this filter.

Enter Only: If you have chosen enter and leaving you can turn off the exact and leaving with this one.

One last thing before I bring this to a close. You can do merges with the searches. There is a limit of 2600 hits in a single search so if you want to have a whole year of transits to transits and transits to your natal chart you may have to do two searches.

Happy Computing!     - Tom Goyett
      Matrix Software