Out of bounds

Meaning

The Sun's declination never goes beyond the obliquity, the tilt of the ecliptic to the equator: about 23°26′ north at the June solstice and 23°26′ south at the December solstice. A planet whose declination is greater than that, north or south, is said to be out of bounds (OOB). It has gone past the turning points of the Sun's year, the "bounds" set by the solstices.

Only a body with ecliptic latitude can do this. Everything that lies exactly on the ecliptic, the Sun, the angles, house cusps and lots, stays within the bounds by definition: its declination is at most the obliquity. A planet can go out of bounds only when it is within about two signs of a solstice point and its latitude carries it farther from the equator. The higher the latitude, the wider that zone: for the Moon it runs from about 22° Taurus to 8° Leo (and from 22° Scorpio to 8° Aquarius), for Venus at its most extreme from about 11° Taurus to 19° Leo.

Which bodies go out of bounds. Computed with the Swiss Ephemeris for 1800–2200, the greatest declinations are about:

Pluto's orbit is tilted about 17° to the ecliptic, so in other centuries, when its high latitudes fall near the solstice points, it goes much farther: over 31° in the 3rd century BC, by the same computation.

Origin and history

The name appears to be modern. Kt Boehrer's Declination: The Other Dimension, first published by Fortunata Press in 1994 [1] [5], covers out-of-bounds planets, with special attention to the Moon; the book's description mentions guidelines and rules for interpreting the out-of-bounds Moon [1]. Boehrer is often said to have coined the phrase, but no source checked for this article confirms it, so who first used it is left open here. Leigh Westin's Beyond the Solstice by Declination (1999) added illustrations and data tables of planets out of bounds at the solstices [2]; Paul F. Newman's Declination in Astrology (2006) discusses them with case studies [3]. The Mountain Astrologer credits Boehrer's book with a renewal of interest in declination in the early 1990s, followed by Westin's [4].

Older astronomers' tables of latitude and declination show planets beyond the Sun's limit, but a special name and interpretation for it are not found in the older sources cited in this Lexicon.

How it is used

Interpretation (attributed). Writers on the subject describe an out-of-bounds planet as acting outside the Sun's usual order. Newman's publisher describes such planets as beyond the Sun's control and inclined to be wild and unrestrained [3]; the Mountain Astrologer article describes an out-of-bounds planet as exaggerated, unusual or unconventional, showing sometimes as a remarkable talent and sometimes as extreme behaviour [4]. These are modern interpretive claims, not astronomical facts, and they have not been tested.

Which obliquity? Two conventions exist. Some astrologers use a fixed round figure, such as the older 23°27′ [4] or today's 23°26′ [3]. Others, this site included, use the obliquity of the date. The mean obliquity was about 23°27′08″ in 1900 and 23°26′09″ in 2026, and nutation adds a wobble of up to about ±9″ [6]. So in modern charts the choice matters only for planets within a minute or two of the limit. For charts many centuries old it matters more: the obliquity was about 23°42′ at the start of the Common Era.

On this site. The Declination panel measures out of bounds against the chart's own obliquity, worked out for the moment of birth, and says by how much each point exceeds it. Planets, the Moon's Node, angles and lots are checked (though the last three lie on the ecliptic and so can never be out of bounds); the Behenian stars, which lie far from the ecliptic, are shown but not flagged. The panel also gives the Moon's reach for the year (see lunar standstill). In Progressions mode it lists the ages at which each progressed planet is out of bounds; in Transits mode it says what is out of bounds on the chosen date.

Examples

All figures use ε = 23.44°.

• The Moon at 15° Gemini with 5° north latitude has declination about 27°34′ N: out of bounds by about 4°07′.
• The Moon at 15° Gemini with 5° south latitude has declination about 17°38′ N: well within bounds, though the zodiac position is the same.
• The Moon at 0° Cancer with 5° north latitude has declination 28°26′ N (on the solstice point, latitude simply adds to the obliquity).
• Pluto in 2026, in early Aquarius with about 4° south latitude, reaches about 23°38′ S in the autumn, a fraction of a degree out of bounds.