Re: Planet X: Planets LEAN Toward Orion

In Article <[email protected]> Bob May wrote:
> Actually, the several conjunctions of the outer planets
> that have happened in the last few years all pretty
> much happened when the Sun was in Orion ...

OK, so if I understand what you just said, the recent conjunction has
the planets lining up in the direction of Orion.  The gentleman who
noted a LEAN in the direction of Orion in the on-line Simulator is going
back into that to determine why he though there was a lean in the
direction of Orion.  I'm wondering if the Simulator showed him
perturbations.  I note that perturbations in the direction of Orion were
the reason for the Planet X search in the early 1980s. Uranus and
Neptune perturbed in that direction, and Pluto, the outermost, has its
aphelion in that direction.

    New York Times
    January 30, 1983

        Something out there beyond the farthest reaches of the
        known solar system seems to be tugging at Uranus and
        Neptune. Some gravitational force keeps perturbing the
        two giant planets, causing irregularities in their orbits.
        The force suggests a presence far away and unseen, a
        large object that may be the long- sought Planet X. ...
        The last time a serious search of the skies was made it
        led to the discovery in 1930 of Pluto, the ninth planet.
        But the story begins more than a century before that,
        after the discovery of Uranus in 1781 by the English
        astronomer and musician William Herschel. Until then,
        the planetary system seemed to end with Saturn. As
        astronomers observed Uranus, noting irregularities
        in its orbital path, many speculated that they were
        witnessing the gravitational pull of an unknown planet.
        So began the first planetary search based on astronomers
        predictions, which ended in the 1840's with the
        discovery of Neptune almost simultaneously by English,
        French, and German astronomers. But Neptune was not
        massive enough to account entirely for the orbital
        behavior of Uranus. Indeed, Neptune itself seemed to be
        affected by a still more remote planet. In the last 19th
        century, two American astronomers, Willian H. Pickering
        and Percival Lowell, predicted the size and approximate
        location of the trans-Neptunian body, which Lowell
        called Planet X. Years later, Pluto was detected by Clyde
        W. Tombaugh working at Lowell Observatory in Arizona.
        Several astronomers, however, suspected it might not be
        the Planet X of prediction. Subsequent observation proved
        them right. Pluto was too small to change the orbits of
        Uranus and Neptune, the combined mass of Pluto and
        its recently discovered satellite, Charon, is only 1/5 that
        of Earth's moon.