SkyLoka · akandam.com · Method & limits
How the numbers are computed — and where they stop.
Every position in SkyLoka is calculated from first-principles
ephemerides that ship in the app. No paid astronomy API, no cached lookup table. Here is exactly what
goes into a chart, and — just as important — what an honest chart refuses to invent.
The engine
- Register & transits
- Full VSOP87 planetary theory (via
astronomia)
with light-time correction; the Sun from its apparent longitude; the Moon from the ELP series. Arcsecond-class.
- In-app live chart
- A compact Schlyter ephemeris — small enough to run every frame
on a phone, accurate to about an arcminute. Good for signs, nakshatras and the drawn sky; the register uses the
heavier VSOP where precision is the point.
- Zodiac
- Sidereal by default (Vedic). A Modern/Western tropical mode is a
toggle — it simply sets the ayanamsa to zero.
- Ayanamsa
- Chitrapaksha (Lahiri) via the IAU-2006 general precession in longitude,
anchored at J2000 = 23.853°. Matches published Lahiri to ~15″. (It does not reproduce Swiss Ephemeris to
1″ — that needs SE's own frame — and we don't claim it does.)
- Lunar node
- Mean node by default (the panchangam standard, and what the register
uses). A true-node toggle is offered; the chart always states which is in use. Ketu is exactly 180° opposite.
- Delta-T (TT − UT)
- Applied before every ephemeris call in the register and transit
pipelines (~69 s today, ~1030 s in the 12th century). It matters most for the fast Moon on historical dates.
- Rounding
- Stored positions are rounded to 0.01°. A body within half its daily motion of a
sign boundary is flagged uncertain rather than silently rounded into a sign.
- Interpretation
- Kept in a separate layer, labelled as tradition, never written into the
same field as a computed number. SkyLoka does not forecast health, money, litigation or marriage, and offers no
remedy, gemstone or puja. See the evidence for why.
The limit no honest app can hide
Without a birth time, there are no houses.
The ascendant moves about one degree every four minutes. Without a documented birth time, any ascendant,
house cusp, dasha balance or compatibility score is a guess wearing the costume of a calculation. Where the
time is unknown, SkyLoka computes what the date honestly allows — planetary signs — and shows nothing
where it cannot. Rival apps quietly default the time to noon (or midnight, or sunrise) and print a confident
ascendant anyway. That is the fabrication the proof cards expose.
Known limits
- The in-app Schlyter engine is ~arcminute; near a sign or nakshatra edge, trust the VSOP register over the
live chart.
- The ayanamsa is a precession polynomial, not the Swiss Ephemeris algorithm — agreement is ~15″, not 1″.
- The Moon's sign needs a birth time; for most historical figures it is genuinely unknown and is left so.
- Register birth data harvested automatically from Wikidata is marked as machine-verified until a human checks it.
- Astrological readings are traditional designations, not predictions — and our own statistical
test finds no measured effect of placement on outcome.