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Old June 20th 17, 11:28 AM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Gerald Kelleher
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Default Polar night and a full moon

On Tuesday, June 20, 2017 at 11:35:12 AM UTC+2, Mike Collins wrote:

Local noon is when the sun crosses the meridian. At the poles all meridians
converge. It's always local noon if the sun is visible at a pole.


There is polar sunrise on the Equinox, polar noon on the Solstice, polar sunset on the opposite Equinox and finally polar midnight on the opposite Solstice with the North pole currently at polar noon and the South pole at polar midnight.

The motion that brings the North pole from its position on the circle of illumination on the Equinox to its current position midway to the circle of illumination is that the forward motion of the Earth through space turns the entire surface of the planet slowly and unevenly.

I am fortunate to visit the Jagiellonian University today and its link to Copernicus. He got the motion of the North and South poles right in his Commentariolus but traded it for axial precession in his De Revolutionibus.

"The third is the motion in declination. For, the axis of the daily rotation is not parallel to the Grand Orb's axis, but is inclined [to it at an angle that intercepts] a portion of a circumference, in our time about 23 1/2°. Therefore, while the earth's center always remains in the plane of the ecliptic, that is, in the circumference of a circle of the Grand Orb, the earth's poles rotate, both of them describing small circles about centers [lying on a line that moves] parallel to the Grand Orb's axis. The period of this motion also is a year" Copernicus , Commentariolus Circa 1514

What I have done is split the planet's dual day/night cycles apart by rotational cause thereby allowing the effects of those rotations in isolation and in combination.