On Friday, January 25, 2019 at 12:09:00 AM UTC, Mike Collins wrote:
Gerald Kelleher wrote:

https://www.theplanetstoday.com/
So you’ve finally realised. You have given a link to a site which
demonstrates perfectly that from the point of view of the Sun there are no
retrogrades.

I understood where a brexit mentality comes from as eccentricity is celebrated as a sign of brilliance among a certain section of British society hence the current mayhem where everyone has their own ideas but nobody has the discipline to pursue a common sense outcome. The same thing happened in late 17th century England when mathematicians fancied themselves as astronomers and so it remains to this day.

I have moved away from the attempt by theorists to call attention to themselves insofar as the partitioning of direct/retrogrades by perspectives seen from a moving Earth takes precedence. Copernicus and the original Sun centred astronomers, including Galileo, got half the picture right for the slower moving planets but not for the faster moving Venus and Mercury.

Accounting for the direct/retrogrades of the slower moving planets rely on relative speeds where a central Sun is inferred rather than observed but the illusory loops in the geocentric system disappear once the observer accepts the Earth moves , in the following case overtaking Jupiter and Saturn -

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/011...2000_tezel.gif

Now that the Earth travels through space and the Sun is central to all planetary motions, it is then relatively easy using satellite imaging to look at the inner solar system and the faster moving planets -

https://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data...current_c3.gif

The Earth's orbital motion is accounted for by the change in position of the stars along the orbital plane thereby setting the Sun up as a central reference. The planet Mercury in that current timelapse is thereby moving behind the Sun in its faster and smaller circuit.

So, after 500 years since Copernicus first accounted for direct/retrogrades of the slower moving planets by realising the Earth moves between Venus and Mars, there is an additional perspective to take into account with its own reasoning and physical considerations.

Many websites are partially adopting the correct view but do not apply the major innovation which is screening out stellar circumpolar motion , something which is just as important as screening out the Sun's glare.