So let's have the elements already!
OK...
FIXED PARAMETERS- The
Longitude of the Ascending Node matches the Earth's orbital longitude on December 21, 2012.
- Nibiru will be at the Ascending Node on December 21, 2012.
- Nibiru will be at the same distance from the Sun that the Earth is (0.98381913 AU) on December 21, 2012 (assuming that the perihelion distance was less than 0.984 AU)
At first glance, it looks like these conditions would always lead to a collision, and that was my intent. However, the Earth moves ~2.5 million km in its orbit in a single day, and (since I didn't want to calculate ~10 minute intervals (the time it takes the Earth to move its own diameter), there is a lot of slop. The actual closest approach to Earth is usually not a collision, and occurs within a day or so from December 21.
This was consistent with my overall objective of showing how bright and easy-to-track Nibiru would be
today (or rather,
tonight ). The actual encounter visuals were just gravy.
- If the perihelion distance was greater than the distance from the Sun to the Earth, then perihelion would occur on 12/21/2012.
I wasn't interested in unfavorable encounters, only closest possible distance for the input parameters.
- Nibiru's period is
3,600 years. This gives a
Semi-major Axis of 234.46 AU.
Again, this conforms to the mythology. I tried it as a variable to see how changes would affect the current range, and therefor brightness. To my surprise, varying the period by
an order of magnitude in either direction (360 - 36,000) years did not substantially change the current range. Since the 12/21/2012 encounter date was fixed, and the time-to-encounter was such a small fraction of the overall orbital period (< 1%) it just didn't matter.
VARIABLE PARAMETERS (These can all be changed on my spreadsheet)[/u]
(Note: upon review, the December 21, 2012 date is also a variable, but I want to conform to the Nibiru "mythology")
- Perihelion distance is
0.4 AU.
This gives us the
Orbital Eccentricity. By selecting <1 AU, this also makes it an "earth-crossing" object.
- Closest approach to Earth occurs
before Nibiru reaches perihelion.
This allows us to compute the date of perihelion and therefore gives us the
Mean Anomaly (epoch is today's date). This, in turn, gives us the longitude of perihelion.
-
Orbital Inclination is
113 degrees. Along with the longitude of the ascending node and the longitude of perihelion, this allows us to calculate the
Argument of PeriapsisSo there are our six
Orbital Elements.
To allow Stellarium to calculate visibility, I needed to input a few more variables:
Radius:
1.2 times
Jupiter (83,893.3km)
Albedo: Equivalent to
Jupiter (0.52)
Color:
Yellowish (similar to Saturn)
Stellarium also allows variation in oblateness, but I left that alone (0)
My speadsheet also allows me to input the mass of Nibiru. Stellarium doesn't need this, since it doesn't model gravitational interactions (for that I use
Gravity Simulator). Once I've run Stellarium and gotten the range for closest approach, I plug said range into the spreadsheet and it computes the tidal stresses on the Earth. Since (for this particular simulation) I'm modelling a brown dwarf, I selected
20 times
Jupiter.
So here is the Stellarium input:
[Nibiru]
name = Nibiru
parent = Sun
radius = 83893.2
oblateness = 0
albedo = 0.52
lighting = TRUE
orbit_visualization_period = 1680.15
halo = TRUE
color = 1.00,1.00,0.85
tex_halo = star16x16.png
tex_map = saturn.png
coord_func = comet_orbit
orbit_Epoch = 2455660
orbit_MeanAnomaly = 359.8188957
orbit_SemiMajorAxis = 234.46
orbit_Eccentricity = 0.998293983
orbit_ArgOfPericenter = -259.1722805
orbit_AscendingNode = 88.92120589
orbit_Inclination = 113
Open the stellarium/data/ssystem.ini file in a text editor such as Notepad.
Copy & paste the above to the bottom of the file.
Save the file.
Open Stellarium. Using the F3 "find" function and type-in Nibiru.
This particular scenario gives a closest approach of 0.0024398 AU(364,988.88km). A 20-Jovian mass brown dwarf at that range would exert a tidal force 603,685.43 times the average effect of lunar tides on Earth. So y'know that move "2012"? Think worse -
much worse.
Of course, with these parameters, Nibiru would
currently be brighter than first-magnitude (rivaling Sirius) and would be easily visible in the evening sky to even the most casual observer.
It would take a lot of chem-trails for the NWO(TM) to cover THAT up! ;D
Oh, if you want to try different parameters, I take requests.