On Wednesday, July 20, 2016 at 9:46:46 PM UTC+1, Mike Collins wrote:
Gerald Kelleher wrote:
There is a day/night cycle provided by the reflected light of the moon
within the polar day/night cycle provided by the orbital surface rotation.

http://www.usap.gov/videoclipsandmaps/spwebcam.cfm

In a few weeks it will return to darkness once more for the last time as
polar dawn begins to appear at the South pole with the Sun appearing for
the first time since March.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okw6Mu3mxdM

This is all going to be expanded on and worked out in detail.



Thank you for posting another video showing how the pole rotates.

I think you belong with those who imagine astronomy is a magnification hobby and speak in terms of what is above and below the local horizon. Anything else is assigned to the empirical theorists who are currently running out of things to say having successfully convinced the wider population that you need to be a mathematician to understand existence, of course, the price is that nobody pays attention anymore.

Given a chance people will be drawn to astronomical events like transits and eclipses as a means to become more involved with motions occurring in the celestial arena, not the whirling celestial sphere which occupies the magnification/identification crowd but the slow and incremental changes which can now be presented in time lapse, sequential imaging and in a manageable format.

The North and South surface points don't rotate as a function of the Earth's orbital motion no more than your location rotates at the speed experienced by those who live at the surface at the Equator. The polar points do rotate to the central Sun as a function of the Earth's orbital motion through space and indeed the entire surface also participates in this wonderful orbital surface rotation which we experience as the seasons when it combines with daily rotation.

All is calm at the South pole presently as the moon continues its orbit so when one of the space agencies from any of the planet's nations decides to put a telescope on the moon, they will see the North and South poles traverse the fully illuminated face of our home planet in turn depending on where the Earth is in its orbit around the Sun. This is not a taunt but a certainty.