"palsing" wrote in message
...

On Saturday, January 10, 2015 at 3:28:06 PM UTC-8, oriel36 wrote:

The line-of-sight observation of Sirius and its first annual appearance
just far enough to one side of the Sun's glare provides the defining
observation for the Earth's orbital position in space

Sirius is never 'just far enough to one side of the Earth's glare'. At
their closest approach, Sirius is about 20 degrees south of the Sun, about
40 solar diameters away! You are probably unable to identify Sirius in the
night sky, and have no business pretending to know what's going on in the
sky.


Ouch! That's a frightening brobdingnagian statement. 40 solar diameters is
55,667,360 km and approximately 1/3 of Earth's orbital radius, and here was
me thinking its closest approach was about 8 light years. What is the period
of comet Sirius that is brightly visible at its aphelion ? Or is it us that
will make closest approach to Sirius so that we are Sirius's comet? I
suspect this will slightly perturb our GPS if Sirius hits Uranus on the way
in.

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