Comparison of simulations to observed planet positions for planet e, d, c, and b subsequently. The histograms show the star-planet distance in our system 94, simulation 4e, after having moved all output to the observed position angle of the planet, bootstrapped a data set, and added a normally distributed error to the simulation data. We show, in black, dark grey, and light grey lines, the observed on-sky star-planet distances from Currie et al. (2011) assuming the mean Earth-HR 8799 distance (39.4 pc) and adding 1 and 2σ of this distance estimate (van Leeuwen 2007). This procedure is described in detail in Sect. 4.2.