About · Founder
Why I built OrbHeaven
I have looked at the sky for more than forty years and built software for twenty. OrbHeaven is where the two finally met: astrology that shows where every claim comes from.
It started with a telescope
I got my first telescope as a kid and asked my dad about all the stars. The questions never really stopped, and astrology became part of how I asked them. More than forty years later I still use it most days, for thinking a decision through and for meditation.
For most of my working life I have built software: twenty years building software as a service. OrbHeaven is the first product I have built for something I actually do.
What I could never find was an astrology app I trusted. Most told everyone born in the same month the same thing, or told me my day was doomed, and none would show how it got there. I wanted one that does the astronomy properly, shows its working, and keeps the reading apart from the measurement. So I built it.
Kevin Blaxton
Founder of OrbHeaven
What it believes
Astrology that shows its work
Every page of OrbHeaven rests on three ideas. They are why it looks the way it does, and why it will not say some of the things other apps say.
- Calculated
- Positions, aspects, houses and dates come from astronomical calculation for the moment and place of birth, not from tables or guesswork. The free birth chart and the sky today show the numbers themselves.
- Interpreted
- What a position means comes from the astrological tradition, and it is labelled as a reading, with the places where astrologers disagree shown as disagreements. It is never dressed up as a measurement.
- Personal
- It works from your chart, not your Sun sign. A horoscope written for a twelfth of the world cannot describe you, which is why horoscopes feel generic. And it keeps what you tell it, so over time your own record has something to say.
Calculation is not interpretation
Astronomy can say where the Sun, the Moon and the planets were at the moment you were born, to the minute of arc, and when the angles between them form. Astrological tradition says what those positions mean. They are different kinds of statement, and OrbHeaven never lets one pass for the other.
Saturn at 12° Pisces in a chart is a measurement; Saturn as a lesson in patience is a reading. You can see that line on every page. Each of the ten bodies, from the Sun to Pluto, has a page that gives the measurements first, then a line, then what the tradition reads into them, under the sentence that sums up the whole site: The position is calculated; what it means is a reading.
That is not a hedge against astrology. It is respect for it: a reading is worth more when you know exactly what it is a reading of.
Built to be checked
OrbHeaven does not ask you to take its word. Every chart is cast with a published astronomical engine, on the tropical zodiac, with the birth time read by the time-zone rules in force at that place on that date. Where the clocks went back and the same time happened twice, it asks which one you mean; a time the clocks skipped is refused rather than guessed. Under every chart are the engine, the zodiac, the house system and the universal time, so any ephemeris can check it; how it works sets out each step.
Where something cannot be known, it says so. Without a birth time the chart is worked out across the whole birth date: each body becomes a range, a body that changed sign that day shows both signs, and no rising sign or house is guessed. The cards and runes are chance, drawn with a secure shuffle, and they say so too. The words it uses are defined in the glossary.
If you ever find a number here that does not check, that is a bug, and I want to hear about it.
No manufactured certainty
OrbHeaven can calculate where the bodies are and when the angles between them become exact. It cannot know what a transit will do in your life, and it does not pretend to. Astrology is a framework for reflection; it is not an established way of predicting events, and nothing here claims otherwise.
So the dates on your Timeline are when the geometry happens, and what a date might ask of you is offered as a reading, never as a forecast. Because it asks afterwards how a date actually went, and keeps your answer, you can see over months what fitted and what did not, in your own words rather than ours. Vesper, the advisor, describes conditions and tensions, not outcomes, and is no substitute for a doctor, a lawyer, a therapist or an accountant. OrbHeaven does not sell your data or show advertising; the privacy page says what is kept and why.
Forty years on, I am still looking up, and still checking the arithmetic. If you find something here that does not add up, or could be clearer, write to me.
Kevin Blaxton
Founder of OrbHeaven
Software builder. Astrology student for more than forty years.