The Orbital Calendar’s
Intro to Orbital Calendrics:

Galactic Family Tree ( a sweet little graphic)

How to view this time-space map:

     The background image shows the center portion of Milky Way Galaxy, a near-infrared composite made by  NASA/DIRBE-COBE Project. It is a view looking toward the constellation of Sagittarius – currently the direction in which the center of the galaxy lies.    Overlaying the Milky Way image is an image of Sun made by  John Gregory Hanses.
Just to confirm – we do not yet have any craft that has gone out as far as the two images combined might imply to create this angle of view.  The image of Sun would be much too large relatively in any case.  What this combined images and design does do for us however is allow us the understanding that as the Milky Way Galaxy, seen here on a horizontal plane from a side view, slowly revolves around itself, our solar system revolves in a comparatively perpendicular plane(actual degrees off of galactic plane is approx.     ).

      The orbital paths of the other planets are shown in this map of our Solar System .  Each planet is located monthly or quarterly at its heliocentric longitude (location in relation to Sun). To get a real feel about where each is at the beginning of each month, you could use some circular labels placed on the poster to mark each one and then move them next month to the next spot.

You will also notice that in the time of one “earth year” that it takes Earth to go once around Sun, the two planets closest to Sun revolve around Sun  more often; Mercury about 4.5 times and Venus about 1.75 times.  Now you can see why these planets have what is called a retrograde motion and look like to us from on Earth that they are going “backwards”…. well of course they are not, but we are moving at different rates.

Beginning with the Millennium 2001 Orbital Calendar poster I include the Mayan glyphs marking their system of 18 months and 5 weeks of 4 days each, color coded as they had done.    The Mayan Indians of Central America had developed the most accurate time keeping system ever recorded by history, so we thought we would honor that and include them here.  Please check the Mayan section for research data.

  The Constellation star chart:

When you take notice of the constellations on the outermost band, you will see that the dates given are not the same as directly across from them on the earth-based calendar portion.  The constellations of stars are shown in correct heliocentric (sun, centered) longitude of time-space; the dates however refer to the time on Earth at which Sun appears to go in front of each.
To clarify: dates are given in astronomical terms as set forth by the International Astronomical Union in 1928 ( and therefore do not correspond to the conceptual dating system known in astrology).

Each day’s location and the phases of the moon are shown relative to the 13 ecliptic constellations in this heliocentric model of the location of each of the solar system’s  planets, including Chiron and Ceres.

Pattern becomes apparent – we can see the almost 13 complete moon cycles repeating itself, in a 365-day solar year; and the standard  12 months  are apparent side-by-side,  color-coded for easy readability.

Orbital Calendar Guidebook:
   A Brief Road Map Of Our Place in Time-Space

A Note on Vocabulary and Color:

Throughout this guidebook we use some of the terminology illuminated by Buckminster Fuller, that consummate, prolific genius of the 20th century.  Bucky recognized and validated Earth as a living, sentient being, no less an individual than our ships and dogs to which we accord the honor of recognition as individuals.  We concur.

In this text Earth, Moon, Sun and Universe are spoken of as proper nouns ( i.e. without the article “the” prefacing them, which is otherwise used to label inanimate  objects.)

Something about color:

Color has been used symbolically, and for consistency to represent the three main celestial bodies:

– Green, for the planet Earth, and the cultural events celebrated by the human inhabitants of Earth;

– Blue, for Moon and the time of her phases as seen from Earth; and

– Orange, for the interaction of Earth and Sun:  The radiating lines separating the days,  the Solstices and Equinoxes.

The specific colors used in the Mayan day symbols are taken from a watercolor reproduction of the Three room temple at Bonampak, done by Antonio Tejuda at Peabody  Museum of Archeology and Ethnology.

Galactic Family Tree

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