The Rose of Venus
Every eight years Venus draws a five-petaled rose around the Earth, and comes back to the same place.
The patterns the planets draw
Venus traces a five-petaled rose around the Earth every eight years. Jupiter and Saturn draw a triangle that turns through the zodiac over eight centuries. Some pieces are computed from where the planets really were and will be, day by day; the rest are the models astronomers from Ptolemy to Kepler used to explain them, and the mathematics underneath. Start the real-sky pieces from a date of your own, change any piece with its controls, and download it.
See the Rose of VenusThe real sky
Computed from where the planets really were and will be. Every point is a real position, sampled day by day.
The Earth and Venus Dance
Join the Earth and Venus with a straight line every day for eight years and a flower with five-fold symmetry appears.
The Path of Mercury
Mercury loops back on itself three times a year. Seen from the Earth, years of those loops braid into a lace pattern.
Mercury Retrograde Triangles
Mercury turns retrograde about three times a year, roughly 120 degrees apart, so each year draws a triangle that slowly walks through the elements.
The Loops of Mars
Every two years the Earth overtakes Mars and it seems to walk backwards. Drawn from the Earth, its path is a ring of loops.
The Great Conjunctions
Jupiter and Saturn meet every twenty years, about 120 degrees further back, tracing a triangle that turns through the zodiac over eight centuries.
Planetary Dances
Pick any two planets, join them with a line every few days, and the ratio of their orbits paints its own mandala.
The Metonic Star
Nineteen years hold almost exactly 235 new moons. Spiral them out year by year around the zodiac and the last one lands right beside the first.
The Eclipse Spiral
Eclipses only happen near the Moon's nodes, and the nodes walk backwards around the zodiac every 18.6 years. Decades of eclipses become a spiral.
The Analemma
Photograph the Sun at the same clock time every day for a year and it traces a figure eight in the sky. Its shape is the tilt and the shape of the Earth's orbit.
The old models
How astronomers from Ptolemy to Kepler explained what they saw, drawn from their own numbers and their own ideas.
Ptolemy's Epicycles
How Ptolemy explained retrograde motion with a planet riding a small circle on a large one, drawn from his own numbers.
Kepler's Nested Solids
Kepler believed the five Platonic solids, nested inside one another, fixed the spacing of the planets. His idea was wrong and his picture is beautiful.
The Orbital Harmonograph
A harmonograph is two swinging pendulums drawing on paper. Tune their rhythms to the ratios between planetary orbits and each pair draws its own figure.
The Music of the Spheres
Scatter sand on a metal plate and play a note: the sand gathers into the lines that stay still. Kepler heard harmony in the planets; these are its shapes.
Pure geometry
The mathematics underneath the sky: ratios, spirals, waves and circles turning on circles.
The Golden Angle
Turn by 137.5 degrees, place a seed, repeat. That one angle packs a sunflower evenly, and Venus and the Earth sit close to its ratio.
Maurer Roses
Walk around a rose curve in fixed angular steps and join the dots. Small changes to the step turn one rose into a different universe.
Times Tables on a Circle
Put numbers around a circle and join each one to its double. A heart appears. Change the multiplier and the heart turns into the other shapes hiding in arithmetic.
Glyphs from Circles
Any closed shape can be drawn by circles turning on circles. Here chains of rotating circles draw the symbols of the planets.
The Flower of Life
Draw one circle, then circles centred on its edge, and keep going. Out of nothing but a compass comes the Flower of Life and Metatron's Cube.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Rose of Venus?
Seen from the Earth, Venus traces five loops around us every eight years and comes back almost to where it started, because eight Earth years are within a couple of days of thirteen Venus years. Joining its five meetings with the Sun around the zodiac draws a pentagram.
Are these pictures computed from real planetary positions?
The real-sky pieces are. They sample planetary positions day by day with astronomy-engine, which agrees with the Swiss Ephemeris to well under an arcminute. The old models and pure geometry pieces are exact mathematics, labelled as such.
Can I make one from my own birthday?
Yes. Enter a date in the gallery and the real-sky pieces that take a start date draw the sky from that day on, such as the rose Venus drew in the eight years after you were born.
Can I download them?
Every piece has a download button that saves a high-resolution image, and a link that reproduces exactly the settings you chose.