Question

I’d like to know why you think the ayanamsha used by Ernst (especially on his Vault of Heavens site) is weird ?

Reply

Here, “weird” just means unusual. Ernst’s system is extremely unusual. Almost no one else thinks of ayanamsha the way he does. He maps coordinates to the equatorial plane, while almost every other ayanamsha ever imagined maps them to the ecliptic plane.

Question

How did you decide that the more common ayanamshas are more preferable?

Reply

Not because one is more common or popular than the other.

Here “Weird” means not sensible. Why map coordinates to the equator, when planets don’t travel around the equator – they travel around the ecliptic.

Question

Why do you use the most basic citrapaksa “lahiri” ayanamsha?

Reply

Because why not?

It works fine, is within a few degrees of every other ayanamsha (except Ersnt’s), and is traceable to source texts like Sūrya Siddhānta.

So why fix something that works well enough? There are plenty of other things way more broken to work on fixing and clarifying. Ayanamsha disputes are relatively minor issues in comparison to things like, say, the tropical vs sidereal zodiac systems.