Long-time readers will recall how oklo.org evinced a certain preoccupation with HD 80606b during 2006 through 2009.

In the interim, this blog has largely random-walked to other topics (largely dissipating its readership in the process) but HD 80606b has stayed the course, ratcheting 52 more hair-raising circuits around its parent star, each of which brings it to within seven stellar radii, increases the instellation flux by a factor of a thousand, and then sees the planet flung out to linger for months near a 0.9 AU apoastron where cooling might well proceed all the way to the point where the torrential nightside rains begin to fall.

A ‘606 day occurs every 111.4 terrestrial days, and marks the UTC occurrence of a periastron passage. The current ‘606 day occurred in the HD 80606 system itself sometime between February and May of 1810 AD, and here in the Solar System is currently occurring right now, with the moment of periastron pinpointed to 04-11-2025 06:33:17 UTC, give or take a few minutes.