Rules for using the service
No atlas access via software

Geographic Distribution of Atlas Data

The following map shows the geographic distribution of the 254,106 towns contained in the atlas database.

Data Sources

The city and timezone data contained in this database are based to a large extent on a licensed copy of the International and American Atlas by Astro Communications (ACS), San Diego, with additions and modifications by Astrodienst AG. All rights are reserved.
Update 2-Jan-1998: We have now separated the former Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia into the new states. It is still possible to define a search for the old state areas by using the country codes USSR, CS and YU, respectively. Output for these states is always presented with the new country codes which follow the ISO standard 3166 two-letter codes. Where these collide with US or Canadian state abbreviations, we use three-letter codes.

The ACS data can be purchased:

As printed books The American Atlas, Expanded 5th Edition, ACS Publications, 1990. ISBN 0-935127-38-0 $39.95, and The International Atlas, Revised 5th Edition, ACS Publications, 1999, ISBN 0-935127-69-0 $39.95

ACS Publications also publishes a software version of its two books, which is usable as a stand-alone program. Additionally, many other popular astrology programs can access the ACS Atlas database directly. Available for any version of Windows, the full PC Atlas is only $195.

For further information or orders, contact ACS: Astro Communications Services, Inc., 5521 Ruffin Rd., San Diego, CA 92123. FAX: 858/492-9917, Phone: 858/492-9919, or E-mail.

Rules for using the service

The Astrodienst server is a reference source for private use by astrologers. It is not allowed to build a commercial service based on the resources of this server, or to extract the information in this server systematically for data capture.

If our system detects an excessive number of requests from the same source within a certain period of time, it will automatically refuse further access.

No Atlas Access via Software

The Astrodienst server is intended to be used by human individuals, who use an Internet browser like Netscape interactively to connect to our server and type their queries by hand. Automatic access by query-generating software is not acceptable and will be considered illegal. Should we be able to identify that from some connections automatic queries are arriving, we block the Internet address groups which are the source of such queries. We had to do this in the past in several cases, mostly from Russia.
When search strings with only four or less characters are entered, the resulting list of cities shows all longitude and latitude values with minute values 'xx'. This is a preventive measure to frustrate attempts to extract all information by systematic short queries from the database. When one clicks on such a city link, the timezone page with the full precision coordinate values is shown.

Some developers of astrological software may have the plan to build automatic access to this server into their programs. This would allow them to offer complete city and timezone information in their software without having to make any effort, just by sending a few URLs over the Internet. Currently they must license a database from companies like ACS if they want to include this information in their software programs.

We as the providers of this atlas service have no intention to damage the business of ACS and others who offer city and timezone databases for sale. We find it important that they can continue in their commercial activities. Therefore we deny permission to software developers to program automatic access to our database into their software.

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