Kali passage through the solar system, as viewed from a fixed position in space. This runs the simulation very quickly, but is useful for getting a basic idea of what happens.

Kali passage through the solar system, as viewed from a fixed position in space, centered on the Sun.

The grid is 10 A.U. by 10 A.U. by 2 A.U. (1 A.U. = average distance from the Earth to the Sun). The simulation slows down during the year of, and the year after the passage.

View centers on the Earth.

The objects move back and forth as the earth orbits the Sun.

Here we are looking at the position of the Sun, without shifting after the Sun is pulled toward Kali. The simulation slows down during the year of, and the year after the passage.

This shows a similar view to the previous simulation, but it includes a lot more data on various things astronomical. Here's a brief rundown on the stats:

Date

This is the date, with the year relative to the year of the passage (year zero).

Distance from Sun to Kali

The distance in Astronomical Units between the Sun and Kali. One Astronomical Unit is the average distance between the Earth and the Sun, around 93 million miles, or about a 14 year airline flight.

Tidal deformation (m)

The height of the tide raised on the Sun because of the difference between the gravitational attraction of Kali on the front and back of the Sun. This is measured in meters. The diameter of the Sun is 1.4 billion meters, so this is never a large effect on the Sun, even at Kali's closest approach. (Oh, and the Sun's diameter would be only a 60 day airline flight.)

Distance from Earth to Kali (AU)

The closest Kali ever gets is just a shade under 3 AU from Earth. You might notice that the rate at which this distance changes speeds up and slows down as Earth's orbital motion carries it towards, and away from, Kali.

Distance from Earth to Sun

This distance normally averages 1 AU (by definition), but because Earth's orbit is not a perfect circle, it varies slightly. Unintuitively (for northern hemisphere folks, anyway), Earth is actually closest to the Sun in early January. The tilt of Earth's axis of rotation is what causes most of the temperature changes. Right around the time of the passage, you will notice that the Earth "cuts the corner" off the normal orbit, and we have a brief period during which we are actually closer to the Sun than we normally get. Of course, shortly thereafter...

Distance from Earth to Moon

Many people are surprised that the Moon (and any Earth-orbiting objects) would not be affected much by the passage of a 14.3 solar-mass object at a distance of 3 AU (Kali's mass and closest approach). The reason for this is the rapid drop in the force of gravity with distance. The Earth's gravitational sphere of influence relative to Kali, even at closest approach, is 2½ times the Moon's orbital distance. The Moon's orbit is perturbed slightly, but probably only an astronomer would notice.

Tidal deformation of Earth due to Kali, Sun, Moon, in centimeters

Even though much of Earth's surface is not a fluid, all of it responds to differences in the gravitational acceleration of astronomical bodies on the front versus the back of the Earth, as seen from that body. The biggest effect is due to the Moon, owing to its closeness to the Earth (tidal forces vary as the inverse cube of distance). Notice that the tidal effect on the Earth from Kali never gets as big as even the Sun's, which means that through you might have some unusually high tides, it's unlikely you would see dramatic effects such as earthquakes or tidal flooding.

Sun, Kali RA/Dec

Astronomers use Right Ascension and Declination to locate objects on the celestial sphere, which you can imagine as a giant sphere with Earth at the center. Right ascension is like the longitude, and is divided into 24 hours instead of 360 degrees. Declination corresponds to latitude, and is measured in degrees, zero being the projection of Earth's equator onto the celestial sphere, and ±90° being the projection of Earth's north and south poles, respectively. Of note here is the Sun's position in the sky: while the Earth is in orbit around the Sun, the RA/Dec of the Sun changes throughout the year, but after Kali's passage the Sun's position settles into a more-or-less fixed position (look here or here), in the constellation of Gemini.

Solar energy

This represents the fraction of the average energy received at the Earth from the Sun. It varies a few percent as the Earth gets closer and farther from the Sun, but around the time of the passage, it increases above normal levels for a short period before decreasing, shall we say, dramatically.

Sun Mag.

This is the Sun's apparent magnitude, as seen from the Earth. Astronomers use a logarithmic scale, where the smaller a number is, the greater the magnitude. The bright star Vega is around magnitude zero, and the faintest star that can normally be seen with the unaided eye is around magnitude +5. The Sun will be by far the brightest star for a very long time, even after Earth is ejected from the solar system.

Moon Mag.

The Moon can also be an extremely bright object, but its brightness waxes and wanes as the Moon's phase changes due to the changing relative positions of the Sun, Moon, and Earth.

α₀

Alpha-sub-zero is a measure of the angular size of the region where light is strongly bent by the gravity of a black hole. The value here is measured in arc seconds. The moon is around 2000 arc seconds in diameter, so you can see that the "size" of Kali as seen from Earth will never be very large, even at closest approach.

Daily motion

This is the amount that the position of Kali changes from one day to the next, in arc seconds, as seen from the Earth. When Kali is far away the value is small, which is why it would be difficult to detect.

Planetary distances

I put in a few distances. Of note is that the new orbits of Mars and Venus come close to the old orbit of Mercury. I have not run the simulation long enough to know for sure, but it seems likely that at some point Mercury will be either ejected from the solar system, or will be thrown into a very different orbit by a close passage with one of the other planets.