What Watch
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Atlas und Time Zones

What Watch's atlas and time zone conversion are a convenient way to assemble data essential to casting an exact horoscope. Without geographic data on a place and its time zone, it's impossible to calculate ascendant and midheaven, and thus the position of the houses.

The atlas is organized by country. Separate country files are smaller and easier to download than one large database. You can download them from www.papertv.com. Each country atlas has a built in time zone directory that contains information on daylight savings time as well.

Atlas

An atlas query needs three steps. Place, country, date and time are already filled in when you start the atlas, but can be changed later.

When you click on "Search", the respective country database is searched. Choose your place from the results and click on "Select". Now, longitude and latitude are filled in, and the time zone valid for the time given is determined.

In the "DST" box, "0" represents standard time, "1" daylight savings time and "2" double daylight savings time, which was used in some countries during WWII. For your information, beyond you'll find the name of the time zone rule applied, which refers mostly to the biggest city in your zone.

The atlas relies on data being freely accessible on the Internet. Longitude and latitude come from the databases of the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Geological Survey. Time zone data is based on the "tz database", providing time zone information for the open source operating system, Linux and others. All data is technically converted for use in What Watch, but remains unaltered and unverified. Therefore, atlas and time zone conversion of What Watch are as accurate or as faulty as the original sources mentioned.

Sources:
Geographic Names Database: earth-info.nga.mil/gns/html
Geographic Names Information System: geonames.usgs.gov
tz database: www.iana.org/time-zones

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