On Wednesday, September 24, 2014 9:27:04 PM UTC+1, Mike Collins wrote:


No mess here. Just you being anachronistic.

The 'definitional' mess is due to the lack of astronomers insofar as any lover of the celestial arena would never have required a planet to be isolated outside the original context of their 'wandering' motions.

How delicate the partitioning between inner and outer planets as they wander against the background stars from two different perspective but these insights are so fragile that they vanish for the crude observers like yourselves who never encountered an astronomical fact that your cult didn't destroy..

The line-of-sight observation as the orbital motion of the Earth through space generates a picture where the stars move behind the Sun in sequence -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeQwYrfmvoQ

The planets follow roughly the same route as those stars as they move along their orbital plane but the inner planets wander against the direction of the background stars as they emerge from the Sun and enter back into the Sun having reached their widest point from the Sun as seen from a moving Earth and then move in the direction of the stars for the other half of their orbits as the inner planets move in front of the central Sun -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdFrE7hWj0A

You have already disgraced yourself enough by putting the Sun in circumpolar motion when the ancient astronomers up to the time of Copernicus used the apparent motion of the Sun through the constellations only as an orbital feature -

"Moreover, we see the other five planets also retrograde at times, and stationary at either end [of the regression]. And whereas the sun always advances along its own direct path, they wander in various ways, straying sometimes to the south and sometimes to the north; that is why they are called "planets" [wanderers]. " Copernicus

To resolve inner planetary retrogrades the more productive line-of-sight motion of the stars behind the central Sun is required in order to create the magnificent grandstand view of the motion of the inner planets as seen from Earth .

Any other era and this would be a wonderful occasion which adds to the achievement of the first heliocentric astronomers so I enjoy the insight alone and in honor of those men and perhaps the experience of using new tools at a time when others can't.