The Sunward field guide
What does distance to an astrocartography line tell you?
Line distance is a geometric measurement from a city coordinate to a modeled planetary line. Sunward Atlas ranks a defined candidate set by that distance; a smaller number does not establish a better city or a stronger real-world outcome.
How close to an astrocartography line is close enough?
Sunward Atlas has no distance cutoff that turns a line’s symbolic meaning on or off. The displayed number measures how far a city coordinate lies from a modeled line. It is not an influence score or a prediction of what will happen there. Practitioners use different interpretive ranges, which should be read with their stated methods and context.
If a city is 100 miles from a line, that is approximately 161 km. Converting the unit does not establish an effect. Read the planet, angle and distance together, and keep the reliability of the birth time in view.
A surface distance, not a score
The calculator measures the shortest distance over a spherical Earth between a city coordinate and a supported line. This is different from driving distance, distance from your birthplace, or the number of pixels between two shapes on your screen. Map projections stretch geography, so the printed distance is more useful than a visual guess.
For rising and setting lines, the calculation finds the nearest point on the applicable spherical arc, including endpoints when necessary. For upper and lower meridians, it measures to the appropriate meridian semicircle. The opposite meridian belongs to the other angle; it is not silently treated as the same line.
The same city can have different distances by theme
Consider the synthetic input 1995-06-15 at 09:30 in Asia/Shanghai. Connection uses Venus DSC; Growth uses Jupiter ASC. Both are calculated for the same birth instant, but they are different geographical lines. Comparing Los Angeles and Tijuana within each theme makes the distinction concrete.
| City | Connection: Venus DSC | Growth: Jupiter ASC |
|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles | 77 km | 432 km |
| Tijuana | 99 km | 259 km |
How a city reaches the shortlist
For a selected theme, the tool examines 371 supplied destination candidates. It keeps candidates with a population of at least 100,000. For each eligible candidate it finds the nearest active line, then sorts by the unrounded distance. The 6 nearest candidates are displayed. Population and a stable city identifier act only as deterministic tie-breakers. There is no hidden happiness, career, or compatibility score.
In the example, Los Angeles comes before Tijuana for Connection because 77 km is less than 99 km. Growth reverses that order: Tijuana is about 259 km away, while Los Angeles is about 432 km away. Neither ordering evaluates the cities' practical suitability for a visit or move.
“All themes” takes the nearest line among 6 thematic lines for each candidate. Cities in that combined list may therefore have different planet-and-angle labels. Read those labels before comparing their numbers; one city may be close to a career line while another is close to a relationship line.
The first city can still be far from its nearest selected line if the other candidates are farther away. First means nearest within the supplied set and theme; it does not mean the city passes an influence threshold. Read the distance rather than relying on the rank or the word “top.”
Why do different guides give different distance ranges?
An “orb” in this context is a range a practitioner uses when interpreting a line. It is a convention applied to a measurement, not another name for the measured distance itself.
For example, Thais Lima describes about 300 miles (500 km) on either side of a line. Helena Woods discusses A*C*G natal lines within 600 miles, ideally within 350 miles, alongside her approach to natal charts and distance-based orbs. These are two attributed practices with their own contexts, not a shared, scientifically established threshold. A distance measurement alone cannot establish how far a symbolic influence extends.
Woods discusses parans separately; Sunward Atlas does not calculate parans. Do not apply a range for another type of line to this tool without checking what it describes. Kilometers also cannot be converted into a fixed longitude difference at every latitude.
Keep input uncertainty and city coverage in view
A precise distance still depends on the birth input. Keeping the teaching date and Shanghai time zone fixed while moving the time from 09:30 to 09:40 changes Los Angeles's Venus DSC distance from about 77 km to 131 km. This sensitivity is a reason to retain the input alongside the result.
City coordinates describe a locality rather than a particular home, street, or venue. The destination set is also separate from the larger birthplace catalogue. A city missing from the suggestions has not been assessed as unsuitable, and the current interface does not let you add any arbitrary destination for ranking.
Use the shortlist as a structured prompt: note the city, theme, line, distance, and reliable practical information. Then investigate the aspects of life there that actually matter to you. This preserves what the calculation can tell you without asking a geographical number to answer a personal decision on its own.
Sources and calculation notes
Technical references below explain the calculations. Practitioner references, where included, document the interpretations attributed to them in the text. Neither type establishes that a planetary line predicts a life outcome. How we use sources