On Friday, May 18, 2018 at 7:32:50 PM UTC+1, palsing wrote:

Sure there is, here...

http://www.nakedeyeplanets.com/movements.htm

... just look at little yellow Mercury as he loops his way along with respect to the background stars... just like all the other planets do. If you weren't told which colors represented which planets you might be hard-pressed to tell the difference between the superior planets and the inferior planets!

There is no need to jump in any more as even though the attempt by those people to explain Mercury's direct/retrogrades was admirable, it is of course wrong and lacking the necessary principles of phases and the incremental change in the position of the background stars (referenced to the central Sun) as proof of a moving Earth.

The shortcut of using phases to create the actual loop of Venus is perfectly acceptable -

http://www.insideastronomy.com/uploa...0_7_128459.jpg

Everything else is a bonus and specifically the relationship between the Earth's orbital motion and the slow incremental changes in the position of the stars parallel to the orbital plane however the idea is that no illusory loops exist when viewing Venus or Mercury as they run their orbital circuits.

It is not for everyone Paul as you are occupied with a calendar based reference system which is even different from the one the first Sun centered astronomers used where even the Sun moves North and South against the background stars. This, of course, distracts from the objective of separating illusory loops of the slower moving planets from the actual loops of the faster moving planets seen from Earth.

I thought the time lapse of Jupiter's satellites would win the day, even for you, but obviously the world of magnification hobbyists doesn't allow practitioners to rise to a different level of understanding.