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Old October 4th 18, 05:37 PM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Gerald Kelleher
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Default Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?

The question the Pope put to Galileo would have the same difficulties today for those terrified of the question as it did back then. Unlike those who imagine there was some doctrinal necessity of a Sun centered system (although Galileo did try to retrofit observations into Biblical texts), those who are intelligent enough would isolate the main point as technical.

The system for astronomical predictions was based on Ptolemy's system where the Sun moved through the Zodiac so that the resolution of direct/retrogrades was meant to fit with this system of reckoning -

". . . the ancient hypotheses clearly fail to account for certain important matters. For example, they do not comprehend the causes of the numbers, extents and durations of the retrogradations and of their agreeing so well with the position and mean motion of the sun. Copernicus alone gives an explanation to those things that provoke astonishment among other astronomers, thus destroying the source of astonishment, which lies in the ignorance of the causes." 1596, Mysterium Cosmographicum, Kepler


The empiricists having been living off the anti-denominational Christian sentiment when only now, using contemporary imaging, can the stand-off be resolved .

The answer is no, predictive astronomy does not mesh with proof of the Earth's daily and annual motions insofar as the resolution of direct/retrogrades for Mercury and Venus require a stationary and central Sun for that purpose -

https://www.popastro.com/images/plan...ary%202012.jpg

Unlike the late 16th and early 17th century, few would have understood the quandary and even less people today. For my part the illusory loops of the slower moving planets further from the Sun than the Earth contrasted with the actual loops (shown above) would be at the heart of astronomy.