New Innovation: Sun Charts

Family tree charts are an excellent way to share your research with your family, and to bring your family history to life. MyHeritage offers a wide selection of beautiful charts and books that can be created — for free — on your family site with a few clicks.

Today we’re introducing a new addition to the lineup — The Sun Chart. This is an innovative new family tree chart for visualizing descendants in family trees.

We call it a “Sun Chart” because the main ancestor (selected by the user) is shown in the center with multiple generations of descendants in outer concentric rings. It can be classified as a descendant fan chart, but it is unique in that it also includes photos, and it isn’t limited in the number of generations. The new Sun Chart is designed to be the most spatially efficient chart, and yet it still easy to understand. Do you have a family get-together or reunion coming up? Be sure to bring along a Sun Chart (or several, one for each of your ancestral lines), and everyone will ooh and aah over it!

The chart above was prepared by MyHeritage Founder and CEO Gilad Japhet for his direct paternal line (Japhet/Pat)  — showing the descendants of his great-great-grandfather. Click here to view the full PDF version of Gilad’s chart. Note that living people are displayed with initials to protect their privacy (this is one of the chart configuration options at the user’s disposal).

The challenge
Family history enthusiasts are always looking for the ideal chart for family reunions and other festive family events. A regular descendants chart, typically horizontal or vertical, can become enormous, too large and unwieldy to be practical for events or for hanging on the wall (unless you own a mansion). Descendant fan charts are a popular choice but, until now, they had limitations. They were limited in the number of generations and did not include personal photos.

The rise of  Sun Charts
The Sun Chart is designed to plot as many descendants as possible on the smallest chart possible. Charts that include hundreds or even thousands of people can now be prepared in this compact circular format and hung conveniently on the wall. The Sun Chart includes high-resolution personal photos, making it the only descendant fan chart with photos that you will find anywhere. This unique chart is available only on MyHeritage — no one else can generate it for you.

Furthermore, we developed an algorithm for making the Sun Charts even more compressed. It calculates every individual’s exact position to produce the smallest possible chart while rotating the rings with minimized spin so that descendants will be shown as close as possible to their parents. All this is done while maintaining clarity even at high levels of compactness, and the compactness is a parameter that the user can control.

Inspiration
The design of the Sun Chart was inspired by a family tree format that the MyHeritage research team came across several times while conducting pro bono research related to the Jewish community of Corfu, Greece. The chart format that we discovered had been used for centuries by that community.  Our researchers immediately understood the unique advantages in such a chart. Its brilliance lies in the way that a different segment (variable degrees) is allocated for each person depending on the number of descendants he/she has, and the simple way it can be extended over time as new family members are born.

MyHeritage recently showcased a Sun Chart while reuniting Nata Gattegno, a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor from Corfu, with her relatives. Although she thought she was alone in the world, our research uncovered cousins that Nata never knew existed or lost touch with many users ago. The following video is an excellent example of the excitement and impact that this type of chart can have when printed and used. The Sun Chart makes an appearance around minute 3:10 in the video and includes about 900 people.

The Sun Chart is free, and all MyHeritage users can enjoy it right now.

How to create a Sun Chart
On your family site on MyHeritage, under “Family tree,” choose “Print Charts and Books”. Select “Sun chart”.

In the “Customize the chart” section, choose the main ancestor for the chart, enter the chart title, pick the number of generations to display (default: all generations) and select the facts to be displayed (no facts, years of birth and death, full dates of birth and death, or full dates and place names of birth and death). If the main ancestor has more than one spouse, choose which one to use for the chart.

Click “Preview Chart” at the bottom to create a preview. Unlike other types of charts, the Sun Chart will be created very quickly; you will be able to preview it, tweak it further until you are satisfied with it, and then generate the final PDF file. In Preview mode, you can zoom the chart in or out, change its settings, or generate it using the controls at the top:

Under “Settings,” you can change all aspects of the chart and preview the changes. Here you can modify more settings, such as the size of text fonts and personal photos (default is Large for both), the level of compactness of the chart, and whether to include spouses (if not, only blood relatives are shown).

The chart compactness setting allows you to control the trade-off between chart compactness and clarity. Less compact charts can be clearer to follow but will require a larger size when printed. “Extreme” compactness will produce the smallest chart possible, but note that such a chart may become less readable as children may be displayed further apart from their parents.

Once you are happy with the chart, click “Generate Chart” and wait for it to be prepared as a PDF file. You can then download it to your computer, and it will also be emailed to you automatically. You can print it yourself at home or use a professional printing company, or email a copy to your family members. We also provide an integrated poster printing service where you can order a lovely poster of your family tree and – with international shipping – have your chart delivered anywhere in the world. We offer a variety of paper types (including standard paper, matte photo, glossy photo, vinyl, and canvas), in sizes of up to 42 inches/107 cm (smallest dimension) and with optional lamination.