On Wednesday, May 16, 2018 at 6:28:29 AM UTC-6, wrote:
On Wednesday, May 16, 2018 at 8:11:34 AM UTC+1, Gerald Kelleher wrote:

The phases of Venus dictate its position to the Sun as seen from a slower
moving Earth so in effect we see that faster moving planet runs its smaller
orbital circuit around our parent star in much the same way we see Jupiter's
satellites run around the parent planet -

To see why this is wrong, look up how long Io takes to orbit Jupiter, and how
long it takes to go from left of Jupiter to right and back to left.

Then look up how long Venus takes to orbit the Sun, and how long Venus takes
to go from Eastward elongation to Westward and back.

This exercise involves looking at numbers, so Gerald is excused.

That doesn't make it "wrong", since now you're talking about a nuance which,
while something Oriel certainly would be likely to get wrong, in this case he
hasn't gotten far enough to be even talking about it.

I mean, suppose you are looking at a music box with a rotating statue of a
dancer on it... from a golf cart riding in a circle around the table. Naturally,
the period between times when the dancer faces you is changed because your trip
around the table has to be subtracted from its motion. But does that mean you
aren't actually seeing the dancer's rotation?

John Savard