All images are Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech, and are generated by JPL’s Solar System Simulator. I believe the use of these images is permitted per JPL’s copyright policy.

The viewpoint of the simulator has been set as earth, meaning this series of images are geocentric.

This next one interests me the most:

I marked the one above where the rings align with earth. I spent some time studying a number of books about Western astrology some years ago, but I’ve never read of anything that places importance on the day when earth intersects with a plane that represents an imaginary extension of Saturn’s rings.

The date that appears to correlate with the coming alignment, September 1, 2009, puts Saturn at 22Virgo55 when using a tropical zodiac; when using sidereal, 28Leo02. However, there’s a window of about +/- 2 days where Saturn’s rings similarly appear to disappear, and since I’ve judged the date of 9/1/2007 visually, the precise zodiacal degree mentioned has a little variance.

In viewing the series of images, the rings appear to oscillate up then down. This is most apparent in the image of 2008.12.01, where Saturn’s rings almost disappear, but then the next image’s leading edge of the rings appear to move back ‘upward’ for a period of time. I believe that is likely due to the earth’s orbit around the sun, the periodicity of the oscillation appears to be based upon an earth year. I’ve been meaning to run a set with the sun as the viewpoint, but this post has been sitting here in the blog for some time, and I just don’t have much time right now. Maybe later.

Is there a relationship between the Salton Sea earthquake swarm near Obsidian Butte and the hurricane Katrina of 2005? Astrology says maybe.

First I decided to check Google to (hopefully) determine whether science makes any claims of relationship between terrestrial magnetism and earthquakes, hurricanes, or weather.
weather “terrestrial magnetism” earthquake “terrestrial magnetism” hurricane “terrestrial magnetism”

While I found no absolute yes or no answers in the few results I checked above, I found it interesting that some of the same sites tended to display in each search result.

My attention was drawn to the swarm of earthquakes that occurred at Obsidian Butte near the Salton Sea of California, and I noted the concentrated earthquake series started during Katrina on Aug 28, 2005. It’s ‘out there’ in concept, but whether the answer is yes, no, or maybe to the question posed in the title, it appears there is an astrological relationship between them.

I’ve checked some of the earthquake times and there are mundane angles running through Louisiana in many of them. The data for the first quake of the swarm beginning on the 28th: 2005/08/28 23:19:52 33.183N 115.596W 1.2 4 km ENE of Obsidian Butte, CA Source: http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Maps/116-33_full.html (data older than one week not shown.) There was at least one Obsidian Butte quake prior to this after Katrina had been identified, but I chose the 28th as the first in an unbroken serial sequence that lasted through the 29th.

Here’s the AstroClick Travel map for that moment, the earthquake’s PDT has been converted to CDT by adding two hours. Astrodienst’s maps make use of cookies, therefore, it’s possible these maps may not be viewable by all. If you cannot see the map, you might try creating a login ID at their site and try clicking on the link above again.

What the map shows astrologically is a line representing the geographical locale where Pluto conjuncts the Descendant, and that line runs either right through or very close to New Orleans. Also, slightly to the west is the Uranus conjunct MC (midheaven) line.

This time is about 5 hours before the storm is reported to have hit the coast. There are 21 other Obsidian Butte earthquake times that curiously, of the several I’ve checked, have various mundane angle hits near Louisiana.

Another AstroClick Travel map for the time Katrina first hit the Louisiana coastline as reported by WDSU timeline: 5:34 a.m.: Katrina Makes Landfall.

This maps shows a line representing Chiron conjuncting the DS (descendant) running through the Salton Sea area. It also shows another line representing Mars conjunct MC (midheaven) slightly west of New Orleans, approximately bisecting the state of Louisiana.

In summary, the time of the first Obsidian Butte earthquake swarm shows astrological mundane angle (AS, MC, DS, IC) relationships to New Orleans, Louisiana: the time of Katrina first hitting the Gulf Coast states shows mundange angle relationships to both the Salton Sea (Obsidian Butte) and Louisiana.

I really don’t know what to make of it, other than forming the question regarding correlation posed in this article’s title.

Please note this article will be undergoing some edits and additions as time allows: this is a rough draft. I will try to put some standard astrological charts up in this article that will show the same angular relationships as the astromaps (astrocartography), but they won’t be overlaid on a geo-graph because I don’t have the necessary software.

A new planet has been discovered by astronomer Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology that’s larger than Pluto. It must be exciting to discover a planet. I mentioned it in a prior post.

Astrologers are going to have some issues with using this planet in their practice. With UB313’s declination of about +/- 45 degrees (!), the planet will only pass through some of the typical zodiacal signs at nodal points +/- some number of threshold declination degrees. Will these nodal points themselves cycle through the zodiacal signs? Probably, but I don’t know right now at what periodicity or cyclical pattern that nodal movement might follow, and the nodal points are not the same as planetary location except for the briefest of time periods. I’m sure programmers of astrological software will include the planet in new versions shortly, but there are technical matters that I hope they consider, one of which is inclusion of all planets nodal points and apside line placements.

As an mental illustration, what movement would happen in the typical astrological chart if a ‘hypothetical’ planet is discovered that has an declination of +/- 90 degrees and its movement is to be viewed in a natal chart display? Let’s further stipulate that with this hypothetical there will be no nodal movement through zodiacal signs. In this case, planetary movement would appear solely digital! In other words, no movement on the standard astrological chart would occur over time until the planets orbital path passed through a line defined by its perpendicularity to the ecliptic plane and drawn through the Sun. Once that orbital path conjuncted the perpendicular line, either north or south of the Sun, then the chart symbol would “jump” to some point on the opposite side of the same chart, and remain there until it passed through the opposite solar side of the north-south line. This would mean that the traditional zodiacal assignment would only be accurate in sidereal for a small amount of time when the planet is near the nodes—the planet’s orbital intersection points with the ecliptic plane.

While the reported 45-degree inclination of 2003UB313 is less than 90-degrees, the same type of synthetic chart phenomenon would still occur, but less severely. Therefore, its my current thinking, that if any typical zodiac such as Western tropical or sidereal is applied to this planet throughout most of its travel on a 2-dimensional representation such as a typical natal chart, most of the time zodiacal assignment will be wrong for the new planet, and the best that could be said is that it would be a synthetic assignment without much basis in background star influence except for the briefest of periods when it’s near one of the two ecliptic intersection nodes. Continuing to use old technical methods of astrology with this new planet will hide its truth to all but a few astrologers, and the same might be said of Pluto, as well.

Here are some illustrations, courtesy of JPL’s java applet. You may click on any of the images to see a larger version.

This first graphic shows Saturn through 2003UB313 and their orbital paths with Saturn’s orbit closest to the Sun or central point. The Sun is represented with a red dot and with a yellow north line and z-axis anchor.

In this next graphic I’ve rotated the representation to show the ecliptic plane as if one was looking at a plate on a table with one’s horizontal view positioned at the table’s top edge. In this and the next grapic, the perspective causes the ecliptic plane to appear as a horizontal line. In this graphic Pluto’s orbital path also appears as a line, the angular difference between the two planes is one way of conceptualizing declination.

In this graphic I’ve rotated the perspective so that 2003UB313 orbital path and the ecliptic are both viewed as lines, and Pluto’s orbit is circular. The new planet’s steep declination versus all other planets’ paths is quite visible, and it appears close to 45 degrees as measured against the ecliptic plane.

It should now be easy to visually understand why the new planet will not travel through the typical background constellations or zodiac signs, except at the nodal points where it’s path intersects with the ecliptic plane. Shouldn’t this create a large interpretive error for astrologers who will say that it travels through each one of the ‘typical’ or popular zodiacal constellations?

Another interpretive point of consideration is that when 2003UB313 is at steep + or – declination, how will astrologers ever be able to honestly say it’s conjuncting one of the more inward planets? At this point of declination, + or – 45 degrees approximately, a conjunction with another planet of 0 declination would at best be a semi-square, which curiously would change its aspectual ease or difficulty, wouldn’t it? There’s a similar issue with Pluto, but it’s also not as pronounced as it will be with this new planet.

Following this reasoning, and making the assumption that half of 2003UB313’s stated orbital period is a close approximation, then traditional zodiacal effects such as traditional aspects to it would imply they will only occur for relatively short periods of time and at a mean bisected-cycle of approximately 278 years (557/2). Because of the typical elongation of the apside line axis relative to the nodal axis, and the faster planetary velocity at perigee than at apogee, this crude average approximation is no doubt off by some amount. Further, if considering that there is likely movement of nodal points through the zodiac, then for interpretation, researching any historical (or real time) effects during 2003UB313s conjunction to its nodes will have changing zodiacal interpretive qualities at each period of nodal intersection with each return.

As far as I know, no astrological program graphically plots all planets’ nodal points, or apse line, but then I don’t have any of the latest and greatest commercial programs. Most do plot the Moon’s nodes and some plot the associated focal point of Lilith. Perhaps Astrolabe’s NOVA did plot these phenomenon, but I never had access to that program to play with, it was too expensive for me at a time way back when, when I was actively interested in such things :(. It’s an area for astrological software improvement, I think.

One way this might be addressed is with a more refined 2-dimensional chart that has circles within the typical circular placement of zodiacal sign. The inner (or outer) added circles would have different zodiacal assignments than the traditional ones, this added group of signs would be defined by the background star patterns on the plane defined by the new planet’s orbit.

There may be other valid symbolic ways of approaching this issue.

This would be preferable to the 2-dimensional visual representation that outer planets orbits “mix it up” either zodiacally or by intersecting with other inner planets’ orbits such as Pluto currently does with Neptune, or which will be much more pronounced now with 2003UB313 in the typical and traditional astrological chart wheel. Astronomer Mike Brown has an image of such a “mixing it up” phenomenon when its viewed in two dimensions from above (or below?). Where the orbital lines appear to cross might give a false idea of the planet’s astrological energies.

In this last graphic, when viewed from a particular angle, it can still be seen that the outer planet orbits do not intersect.