Thread: Polar astronomy
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Old March 8th 18, 07:44 PM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Quadibloc
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Default Polar astronomy

On Thursday, March 8, 2018 at 11:26:42 AM UTC-7, Bill wrote:

I can't think of any professional level endeavor where that his sort of
lackadaisical, sloppy, piecemeal approach would provoke anything but
scorn from any audience.


I am not defending him from the charge of being a crackpot, because that
he obviously is, but simply noting that when he occasionally, if only by
accident, gets something right it should be acknowledged.

His view that astronomy should be a quasi-mystical activity is obviously
to be dismissed.

His idea that we are anti-Copernican if we relate the Earth's rotation
directly to the inertial frame of the fixed stars is wrong and silly.

But, in connection with his mistaken framework, when he points out that
there is a distinction between the way retrograde motion is manifest in
the inferior planets and the superior planets - well, he is pointing out
something real. In the case of the inferior planets, we are indeed
looking at those planets' real orbits around the Sun - although it would
be more apparent from, say, the Moon, without an atmosphere, than on
Earth, where it was once thought that Venus was two distinct bodies, the
evening star and the morning star.

With Mars or Jupiter, their real orbits around the Sun have retrograde
motion added to them; with Venus and Mercury, the retrograde motion is
caused by their real orbital motion on the opposite side of the Sun.

He may impute a different significance to this fact than we would, but
the fact is real none the less.

So even if he is getting parts of the story wrong, since he is here
mentioning something quite real, to say he is ludicrously wrong, 100%
wrong, or saying the exact opposite of the truth just isn't accurate.

John Savard