Instead of looking at terse astronomical indications, I found a website that shows an orrery of the Solar system.
You can increase the size (otherwise, the Earth is sometimes hidden under Venus) With size 960 it looks quite nice
You can just enter the date in the UTC window under the picture (YYYY-MM-DD- nothing much changes with the exact hour)
Compared the relatively grouped planets (except for small and distant Pluto) on 1990-01-01 (Mars a bit off, and Pluto of course- OK, OK, early January rather than mid-January, I was a bit off, too; but January 15th is not that bad) or 2010-09-20 (well, Neptune is a bit off, and Pluto, ditto) and the wide spread of 2012-12-21!
Hi, Kilt! We crossed posts.
I looked at May 5th, 2000. Not bad, except for Uranus and Neptune (always ignoring Pluto)
September 2040 is promising, too, but I'd say later in the month than on the 9th, for Earth to get on the line of the slower planets.
Heinlein's book is a novel. Also Ganymede is very close to Jupiter, and the latter exerts huge tidal forces on the former. That distant planets (or, was it, maybe, other Jovian satellites coming nearby?) could have a measurable effect is probably not scientifically true, but then, it is just a novel, it does not have any pretentions to announce an actual impending Doomsday!
I thought the book "Ice, the Ultimate Disaster" was a joke. I mean, the author is called Noone. But such a bookdoes exist.
Which means that the scenario of the "Sixth Sun" is not even original!
Noone's idea was exactly the same, and it was published in 1997!
At least he took the time to find a date with some alignment. "Sixth Sun" date, December 21st, 2012, is just random, they did not even try to find a decent alignment. With an orrery like the one I found, you can play around to find more. I'm sure the estimate of nine times since 1000AD is well below the reality. There must be several dozens of better cases.
The Sixth Sun
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KiltanneN
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This is Friggin' AWESUM!voralfred wrote:I found a website that shows an orrery of the Solar system.
Thanks Vor A!
The wonderful thing about not planning
Is that failure comes as a complete surprise
And is not preceded by a period of worry or depression
Is that failure comes as a complete surprise
And is not preceded by a period of worry or depression
voralfred wrote:I found a website that shows an orrery of the Solar system.
That is pretty nice!!!
Thanks!!!
The best syzygy* I've been able to locate after a cursory search was March 25th, 1981.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/scie ... &offset=80&&&&&
It looks pretty nifty in the orbial simulator.
I have no information on any major geological events at the time ... I'm guessing it was probably a typical day.
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* I think that was a WOTD a few years back, but I'm too lazy to search it out ATM.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/scie ... &offset=80&&&&&
It looks pretty nifty in the orbial simulator.
I have no information on any major geological events at the time ... I'm guessing it was probably a typical day.
--------------
* I think that was a WOTD a few years back, but I'm too lazy to search it out ATM.
Look at January 21st, 2080, late (around mdinight, or on the 22nd, very early)
The light planets, of the inner system (Mercury, Venus and Mars), and Pluto are all wrong. But we have a fantastic syzygy of Earth, the Sun and of all four heavy gas giants, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune (the latter on the same side of the the Sun as Earth, contrary to the other three) AND the Moon (this is the only one where the hour counts; for the planets, the exact hour does not matter).
The Moon does not appear on the figure of the orrery, but the numbers, right ascension and declination, are written below. Ignore declination. For objects on the ecliptic, if the right ascension match, this is the important thing. Seen from Earth, not the Sun, the right ascensions are all almost equal, within les than 30 minutes except Neptune that is exactly 12 hours off (meaning: aligned in the opposite direction). This means they are all within seven degrees, one quarter of an astronomical sign.
But it is rather in the past it would be interesting to find one, to check what happened on that day (nothing, of course!!!)
The light planets, of the inner system (Mercury, Venus and Mars), and Pluto are all wrong. But we have a fantastic syzygy of Earth, the Sun and of all four heavy gas giants, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune (the latter on the same side of the the Sun as Earth, contrary to the other three) AND the Moon (this is the only one where the hour counts; for the planets, the exact hour does not matter).
The Moon does not appear on the figure of the orrery, but the numbers, right ascension and declination, are written below. Ignore declination. For objects on the ecliptic, if the right ascension match, this is the important thing. Seen from Earth, not the Sun, the right ascensions are all almost equal, within les than 30 minutes except Neptune that is exactly 12 hours off (meaning: aligned in the opposite direction). This means they are all within seven degrees, one quarter of an astronomical sign.
But it is rather in the past it would be interesting to find one, to check what happened on that day (nothing, of course!!!)
Human is as human does....Animals don't weep, Nine
[i]LMB, The Labyrinth [/i]
[i]LMB, The Labyrinth [/i]
Too bad that simulator doesnt include an animation mode, or better still, a mode where you could solve for the nearest date (backwards or forwards) of a particular alignment combo, by dragging various planets along their orbit like the cogs on a combination lock.
Shouldnt be hard to multiply the periods themselves with a hand calculator ... the only problem is that website limits the year to just 4 digits, which is too small to find the really impressive mathematical permutations.
Shouldnt be hard to multiply the periods themselves with a hand calculator ... the only problem is that website limits the year to just 4 digits, which is too small to find the really impressive mathematical permutations.
Well, the periods are not commensurable, so there is no single huge period for the entire system. And anyway over very long times, the periods are not even constant! One should have to take into account the variation of the periods if one considers more than a few thousands years.
What you want is not an exact coincidence anyway, but an approximate one. One has to decide what tolerance you admit.
In fact, the most important objects are Jupiter and Saturn. Jupiter catches up with Saturn in a just less than 20 years, so every 10 years, roughly, Jupiter traverses the Sun-Saturn (full) line, either on the same side as Saturn or on the other one. Now if you accept a tolerance of about 10 degrees on each side, Jupiter stays about one year in the "tolerance zone" which allows Earth to go through the approximate Sun/Jupiter/Saturn (full) line twice (one on each half-line). This is why all the coincidences in the recent past or near future are in years ending with 1 or 0 (1981, 1990, 2000, 2010, 2020, up to 2080) Further ahead (or in the past), the last digit will change (so it was in 1802, not 1801)
Where Mars and Venus are on those occasion has to be checked in each case, hard to tell since the periods are not commensurate.
If you want also both Uranus and Neptune, then you have to consider the fact that Uranus takes about 172 years to catch up with Neptune. So it traverses the Neptune-Sun (full) line every 86 years on one half line ot he other. And again if you allow for about 10 degrees tolerance on each side, this gives you a window of about 10 years on each such occasion. So one (or just possibly two) Jupiter-Saturn syzygy happen during one Uranus-Neptune one. However, chances are they will not happen on the same line. So the coincidence of all four in 2080 may not happen again for a long long time...
The previous Uranus-Neptune syzygy, 86 years earlier (centered around 1993), was the occasion of the 1990 approximate syzygy of all four gas giants and the Sun (and the Earth) that I discussed earlier, not as good as the 2080 one. In 1981, the Jupiter/Saturn syzygy happened to be shared by Mars and Venus just when the Earth crossed that line but Uranus and Neptune were completely off.
In 1911 Neptune and Uranus are still more or less in syzygy with the Sun, when Jupiter and Saturn also became aligned with the Sun, but these two lines are in rather different directions. The 1901 syzygy of Jupiter and Saturn is more or less on the same line as Neptune, but Uranus had not yet come very close. Not too bad, though, but not so good, either. By the time of the next Jupiter-Saturn syzygy in 1921, Uranus and Neptune were not on a line with the Sun anymore, and anyway none of them was near the Jupiter-Saturn line. So that chance was lost and one has to backtrack almost one century for another chance to have a hope for all gas giants on a same line...
In 1821 one has a very good Sun-Uranus-Neptune syzygy just at the same time as the Sun-Jupiter-Saturn one... alas, on very different directions. That guarantees that for both the 1812 and the 1831 Sun-Jupiter-Saturn syzygy, Uranus and Neptune are already too far apart....
86 years before... you check it!
In a more distant future February 6th, 2169 is even better than 2080. Even Mars and Venus are now in the syzygy!
There is some vague alignment in late August 2258, not very impressive
Mid-august 2329 is even worse as far as Uranus is concerned, but the other ones are about OK. The Uranus/Neptune syzygy is better in 2339, but the Jupiter and Saturn are aligned on a totally different line.
August 16th, 2418 is not bad, you even have the Moon around noon
But my favorite is September 10th, 2508, around noon (for the Moon): even Mars and Venus are nice. Jupiter is a bit ahead, but still...
Or, if you ignore Mars and Venus, you get the best possible fit for Earth, the Sun and all four gas giants on February 29th 2508. If you want to have the Moon, you have to wait till March 2nd around 6pm, the fit for the planets has barely changed.
So, be afraid, be very afraid... for your grand-grand-grand......grandchildren: the world has two chances to be destroyed in 2508, once in late February/early March, once in mid-September...
(if it survived the half or dozen or so syzygies in the meantime; it would seem the only safe date is December 21st, 2012
)
What you want is not an exact coincidence anyway, but an approximate one. One has to decide what tolerance you admit.
In fact, the most important objects are Jupiter and Saturn. Jupiter catches up with Saturn in a just less than 20 years, so every 10 years, roughly, Jupiter traverses the Sun-Saturn (full) line, either on the same side as Saturn or on the other one. Now if you accept a tolerance of about 10 degrees on each side, Jupiter stays about one year in the "tolerance zone" which allows Earth to go through the approximate Sun/Jupiter/Saturn (full) line twice (one on each half-line). This is why all the coincidences in the recent past or near future are in years ending with 1 or 0 (1981, 1990, 2000, 2010, 2020, up to 2080) Further ahead (or in the past), the last digit will change (so it was in 1802, not 1801)
Where Mars and Venus are on those occasion has to be checked in each case, hard to tell since the periods are not commensurate.
If you want also both Uranus and Neptune, then you have to consider the fact that Uranus takes about 172 years to catch up with Neptune. So it traverses the Neptune-Sun (full) line every 86 years on one half line ot he other. And again if you allow for about 10 degrees tolerance on each side, this gives you a window of about 10 years on each such occasion. So one (or just possibly two) Jupiter-Saturn syzygy happen during one Uranus-Neptune one. However, chances are they will not happen on the same line. So the coincidence of all four in 2080 may not happen again for a long long time...
The previous Uranus-Neptune syzygy, 86 years earlier (centered around 1993), was the occasion of the 1990 approximate syzygy of all four gas giants and the Sun (and the Earth) that I discussed earlier, not as good as the 2080 one. In 1981, the Jupiter/Saturn syzygy happened to be shared by Mars and Venus just when the Earth crossed that line but Uranus and Neptune were completely off.
In 1911 Neptune and Uranus are still more or less in syzygy with the Sun, when Jupiter and Saturn also became aligned with the Sun, but these two lines are in rather different directions. The 1901 syzygy of Jupiter and Saturn is more or less on the same line as Neptune, but Uranus had not yet come very close. Not too bad, though, but not so good, either. By the time of the next Jupiter-Saturn syzygy in 1921, Uranus and Neptune were not on a line with the Sun anymore, and anyway none of them was near the Jupiter-Saturn line. So that chance was lost and one has to backtrack almost one century for another chance to have a hope for all gas giants on a same line...
In 1821 one has a very good Sun-Uranus-Neptune syzygy just at the same time as the Sun-Jupiter-Saturn one... alas, on very different directions. That guarantees that for both the 1812 and the 1831 Sun-Jupiter-Saturn syzygy, Uranus and Neptune are already too far apart....
86 years before... you check it!
In a more distant future February 6th, 2169 is even better than 2080. Even Mars and Venus are now in the syzygy!
There is some vague alignment in late August 2258, not very impressive
Mid-august 2329 is even worse as far as Uranus is concerned, but the other ones are about OK. The Uranus/Neptune syzygy is better in 2339, but the Jupiter and Saturn are aligned on a totally different line.
August 16th, 2418 is not bad, you even have the Moon around noon
But my favorite is September 10th, 2508, around noon (for the Moon): even Mars and Venus are nice. Jupiter is a bit ahead, but still...
Or, if you ignore Mars and Venus, you get the best possible fit for Earth, the Sun and all four gas giants on February 29th 2508. If you want to have the Moon, you have to wait till March 2nd around 6pm, the fit for the planets has barely changed.
So, be afraid, be very afraid... for your grand-grand-grand......grandchildren: the world has two chances to be destroyed in 2508, once in late February/early March, once in mid-September...
(if it survived the half or dozen or so syzygies in the meantime; it would seem the only safe date is December 21st, 2012
)Human is as human does....Animals don't weep, Nine
[i]LMB, The Labyrinth [/i]
[i]LMB, The Labyrinth [/i]