In message , George Dishman
writes
"Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply"
wrote in message ...
In article , George Dishman
writes:

"Jonathan Silverlight" wrote in message
...
In message , oriel36
writes
.....
Proper motions of stars are pre-galactic notions besides they contain
elements of the celestial sphere in position descriptions of external
galaxies.

Could someone translate this into standard English?

It's not easy but I'll give it a go:

a) So-called "proper motions" of stars are actually
an illusion caused by rotation of the Milky Way.

To some extent, yes, but stars also have a peculiar motion, i.e. a real
motion through space. Observed proper motion is a combination of this
and the "illusion" referred to above.

Gerald I think is suggesting the proper motion is
entirely due to this. Given the next point, his
view equates to a motion of all the stars round
the Earth once a year.

I wonder how he explains the motion of the stars of the Plough (Big
Dipper) - even the most elementary textbook notes that two stars are
moving in a different direction to the rest
http://www-astronomy.mps.ohio-state....es/proper.html

Nice movie!


b) The Earth rotates through 360 degrees in a solar
day, not a sidereal day as astronomers think,
therefore the concept of right ascension as a
means of documenting the location of stars is
flawed.

There is, of course, an extragalactic reference frame, defined via
quasars. While this is somewhat problematic if quasars show a proper
motion, ON AVERAGE they will probably have a negligible proper motion
and/or the higher redshift quasars (at least in the standard paradigm)
will have a negligible proper motion. (I'm not very familiar with it,
but I would suspect that this reference frame is defined via
high-redshift quasars.)

Wouldn't finding proper motions of quasars be almost as upsetting as
finding that Gerald (or Ralph Sanbury) was right? :-)


Indeed. However, Gerald's view can be falsified
by noting that the stars rise and set about four
minutes earlier each day.


Gerald occasionally posts a link to a picture of star trails round
Polaris.
Has anyone taken a picture lasting a full 23 hours 56 minutes? You could
do the arithmetic with shorter trails, but it wouldn't be so dramatic.