Sun transit time question May 5, 2004

DT wrote in message ...
Oriel36 wrenched his hand from the flames
and wrote;
snipped

Same old master puppeteer pulling your strings eh Gerald?
For Keplers sake give us a new tune.

Denis

The original poster has noted that there are two seperate motions
involved,axial rotation and orbital motion and that some stress would
be generated on the planets surface in maintaining constant axial
rotation within variable orbital motion,this is common sense and
noteworthy.

Now he is faced with the contemporary view that axial and orbital
motion can be combined into a single sidereal motion,normally it would
be absurd for there is no equable rotational motion of the Earth wrt
the Sun every 24 hours nor is there a constant .986 degree orbital
displacement for each axial rotation wrt the local stars.

http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~js/ast121/i...real_solar.gif

The development of accurate clocks based on the 24 hour/360 degree
equivalency to resolve the longitude issue emerged as a solution to
save lives,it admits no insincerity, foolishness or pretensiousness
and perhaps if I can spare this poster some of the misery John
Harrison suffered in opening up new avenues in also saving lives by
better comprehension of earthquakes,plate tectonics and how planetary
motion affects both,everyone gets served by playing a part.

"Oriel36" wrote in message
om...

I was having such a difficult time trying to mentally picture how all of the
various sun and moon gravity related forces etc. were acting on the Earth
that I finally created a drawing which shows how a number of those forces
look compared with one another and with the time that earthquakes are
occurring. The chart with that information is part of the way down this Web
page:

http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/90-05.html

In my opinion, those data are quite interesting and informative.

That chart was created by an enormous Excel spreadsheet program which lets
me place earthquake lines anywhere desired and which can move the waves up
and down in the chart or expand them as desired. I am hoping to get that
technology incorporated into the new earthquake and tornado data evaluation
Perl program.

People might want to visit the following Web page which was just updated.
It contains examples of how this technology is being used in an effort to
forecast earthquakes and perhaps some tornados.

http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/303.html

I believe that people have suspected for centuries that the sun and moon
positions were somehow tied with earthquake occurrence times. I believe
that my programs clearly show that this is true. And the reason that they
can do that is because I made what I believe are two important discoveries
regarding how earthquakes are being triggered. One has to do with how sun
and moon gravity forces combine and act on the Earth's crust etc. The other
has to do with a type of symmetry effect. It says that the moon etc. can be
in a number of different locations in the sky and still produce the same
type of triggering effect.

"edgrsprj" wrote in message link.net...
"Oriel36" wrote in message
om...

I was having such a difficult time trying to mentally picture how all of the
various sun and moon gravity related forces etc. were acting on the Earth
that I finally created a drawing which shows how a number of those forces
look compared with one another and with the time that earthquakes are
occurring. The chart with that information is part of the way down this Web
page:

http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/90-05.html

In my opinion, those data are quite interesting and informative.


Yes it is and very comprehensive.I can see the relevence of the thread
in this light and while not altering the data in the slightest,if it
were possible to shift the descriptions entirely to the motions of the
Earth using the Sun as a reference whereas the tendency remains to
adhere to geocentric notions of the motion of the Sun.Assuming that
one of the stress factors on the Earth's crust in terms of plate
tectonics and by association - earthquakes is due to maintaining the
constant axial rotation of the Earth while its orbital motion varies
you may well comprehend why adherence to the sidereal/stellar
circumpolar format makes discussion impossible.



That chart was created by an enormous Excel spreadsheet program which lets
me place earthquake lines anywhere desired and which can move the waves up
and down in the chart or expand them as desired. I am hoping to get that
technology incorporated into the new earthquake and tornado data evaluation
Perl program.

People might want to visit the following Web page which was just updated.
It contains examples of how this technology is being used in an effort to
forecast earthquakes and perhaps some tornados.



http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/303.html

I believe that people have suspected for centuries that the sun and moon
positions were somehow tied with earthquake occurrence times. I believe
that my programs clearly show that this is true. And the reason that they
can do that is because I made what I believe are two important discoveries
regarding how earthquakes are being triggered. One has to do with how sun
and moon gravity forces combine and act on the Earth's crust etc.

You will possibly be faced with a dilemma in your endeavor for
strictly speaking one of the major forces acting on plate tectonics
result from the seperate motions of the Earth,constant axial rotation
and variable orbital motion, acting against each other placing
stresses on the Earth's crust.Contemporaries recognise only the
combined axial and orbital motion of the Earth and condense it into
the sidereal or stellar circumpolar framework.

http://ottawa.rasc.ca/pictures/pdelorme/polaris.jpg

If you recognise the problem you can resolve it as opposed to those
who close their eyes and pretend not to see that linking the Earth's
rotation through 360 degrees directly to stellar circumpolar motion or
the 'fixed stars' kills discussions like this one stone dead.



The other
has to do with a type of symmetry effect. It says that the moon etc. can be
in a number of different locations in the sky and still produce the same
type of triggering effect.

The validity of the correlations would come into conflict with the
institutional facility that accepts or rejects them,you are on your
own in other words.I pointed out that even if the stature of such
institutions as NASA and the ROG adhere to the motions of the Earth as
a single sidereal motion you will find the ability to discuss the
material based on the stresses between variable orbital motion and
constant axial rotation lost in a linguistic babble designed to
support the scaffolding of the exotic early 20th century concepts.

"edgrsprj" wrote in message
ink.net...
Sun transit time question May 5, 2004

Posted by E.D.G. May 5, 2004

I am working with a professional computer programmer to develop Basic and
Perl language programs which will generate subsolar and sublunar point
latitudes and longitudes. The first program is now running and is being
"fine tuned." In developing it I noticed something and am curious
regarding
what causes it. Perhaps someone reading this note will know the answer.

In theory the sun should be directly above 0 longitude, the Greenwich
longitude, at 12 noon each day. But the longitude numbers for its actual
location at 12 noon that this and other programs generate show that there
is
a variation of perhaps as much as 15 minutes in that transit time at
different times of the year. And those variations are reproducible from
year to year.

Q: What is the cause of those variations? I am assuming that I am
interpreting the data correctly.

Might this be due to the fact that the Earth orbit is an ellipse rather
than
a true circle. And for that reason the 0 longitude line is directly
beneath
the sun at slightly different times during the year because the Earth
rotation does not perfectly match its constantly changing orbital speed
around the sun?



You have already had a couple of good answers, and some very strange ones.
The name for what you have noted is called the "Equation of Time" and it is
possible to write approximate expressions (accurate to 5-10 sec or so) that
might be good enough for your coding. A possible source is the book
"Spherical Astronomy" by Green (I think that's the name).

The Equation of Time is due to a combination of the Earth's elliptical orbit
and the inclination of the equator to the ecliptic by 23.5 degrees (approx).
Compare the Sun's noon passage on a sundial with a perfect atomic clock,
starting on the Spring Equinox 21st March. If the orbit was perfectly
circular but inclined to the equator, the Right Ascension of the Sun would
fall behind between the clock for about 6.5 weeks then begin to catch up by
the Summer Solstice. It would then get ahead for 6.5 weeks but slow down
and be even again at the Autumn Equinox 22nd September. It would then fall
behind again and then speed up to be equal again at the Winter Solstice,
then finally once again the RA would get ahead for 6.5 weeks and then start
to fall back, to be equal again at the Spring Equinox a year later.

If you mapped this behaviour out on the sky by photographing the sun from a
fixed camera each day at exactly the same atomic clock time, it would appear
to trace out a figure-eight on the sky. (An analemma).

The actual analemma is lop-sided with one big loop and one small one,
because the Earth's orbit is eccentric. The shape is almost symmetric
because the dates of perihelion (around Jan 5) and aphelion (around July 4)
happen to be pretty close to the dates of the solstices.

An excellent web site that explains the details with nice graphics and
equations is

http://www.analemma.com/

The links to their maths summaries will give you the equations you need to
code.

--
Mike Dworetsky

(Remove "pants" spamblock to send e-mail)

May 9, 2004

I would like to say thanks for all of the information which people have
posted in response to my inquiry.

The computer programmer that I am working with and I now have the Subsolar
and Sublunar latitudes and longitudes section of the program we have been
developing generating numbers which are in fairly good agreement with the
MICA program which was developed by or for the U.S. Navy. So the question
of sun transit time variations will no longer affect that program. And the
program is already getting its first update. Routines for generating
Earth - sun and Earth - moon distances are being added. Right now they are
not in good agreement with the MICA numbers. And we are working on that.
After that has been settled we might try to add similar types of information
for the planets.

The research that I myself can do on this is limited. But if I can get some
organization interested in taking charge of this effort then a project will
hopefully get started which involves coordinating celestial mechanics,
geophysics, and a number of other sciences. And there should be some
interesting and important discussions regarding positional relationships
between the sun, the moon, the Earth, the planets, gravitational and tidal
forces, and the locations where earthquakes are occurring. I believe that I
have already made the two crucially important discoveries needed to get the
project to work, one involving sun and moon gravity combinations, and the
other involving a type of earthquake triggering symmetry. And from this
point on the effort should involve "filling in the blanks" as the saying
goes.

The present plan is to store this new Subsolar and Sublunar point computer
program and its source code at some Web site so that it will be available
for free to interested parties.

"Oriel36" wrote in message
om...

See my other response note.

"Mike Dworetsky" wrote in message ...
"edgrsprj" wrote in message
ink.net...
Sun transit time question May 5, 2004

Posted by E.D.G. May 5, 2004

I am working with a professional computer programmer to develop Basic and
Perl language programs which will generate subsolar and sublunar point
latitudes and longitudes. The first program is now running and is being
"fine tuned." In developing it I noticed something and am curious
regarding
what causes it. Perhaps someone reading this note will know the answer.

In theory the sun should be directly above 0 longitude, the Greenwich
longitude, at 12 noon each day. But the longitude numbers for its actual
location at 12 noon that this and other programs generate show that there
is
a variation of perhaps as much as 15 minutes in that transit time at
different times of the year. And those variations are reproducible from
year to year.

Q: What is the cause of those variations? I am assuming that I am
interpreting the data correctly.

Might this be due to the fact that the Earth orbit is an ellipse rather
than
a true circle. And for that reason the 0 longitude line is directly
beneath
the sun at slightly different times during the year because the Earth
rotation does not perfectly match its constantly changing orbital speed
around the sun?



You have already had a couple of good answers, and some very strange ones.
The name for what you have noted is called the "Equation of Time" and it is
possible to write approximate expressions (accurate to 5-10 sec or so) that
might be good enough for your coding. A possible source is the book
"Spherical Astronomy" by Green (I think that's the name).


The Equation of Time is due to a combination of the Earth's elliptical orbit
and the inclination of the equator to the ecliptic by 23.5 degrees (approx).
Compare the Sun's noon passage on a sundial with a perfect atomic clock,
starting on the Spring Equinox 21st March. If the orbit was perfectly
circular but inclined to the equator, the Right Ascension of the Sun would
fall behind between the clock for about 6.5 weeks then begin to catch up by
the Summer Solstice. It would then get ahead for 6.5 weeks but slow down
and be even again at the Autumn Equinox 22nd September. It would then fall
behind again and then speed up to be equal again at the Winter Solstice,
then finally once again the RA would get ahead for 6.5 weeks and then start
to fall back, to be equal again at the Spring Equinox a year later.


Winter solstice is a hemispherical term conditioned by axial tilt or
what amounts to the same thing,equatorial orientation to the
Sun,winter does not occur simultaneously over the whole planet and
subsequently is not a component of the Equation of Time.

There is not the slightest difficulty in determining what the Equation
of Time (EoT) does in facilitating the transition from one 24 hour
day to the next using the noon determination and it is fairly easy to
see that in equalising the variation in orbital motion,it facilitates
isolation of the Earth's rotation on its axis to the 24 hour/360
degree equivalency.

http://www.burnley.gov.uk/towneley/tryall/eot3.htm

http://ircamera.as.arizona.edu/NatSc...res/kepler.htm

It is even easy to see why astronomers applied the EoT to their
astronomical observations on the motions of the primary planets for it
reduces the natural observed variations due the the motions of the
Earth and permits the study of the other planet's and their
satellites actual motions in isolation.

http://dibinst.mit.edu/BURNDY/OnlinePubs/Roemer/chapter3(part2).html

For calendrical purposes the EoT determination of the equable 24 hour
day which in turn calculates the annual orbit as 365.25 days and
further still facilitates the calculation of stellar circumpolar
motion.

For navigational purposes,the Equation of Time facilitates the
reduction of the variable pace of the day to a constant pace hence the
standard to which mechanical clocks were fixed.

The Equation of Time facilitates recognition of the difference between
constant axial rotation and variable orbital motion,in determining the
stresses related to the difference between the Earth's axial rotation
and variuable orbital motion it would be pointless to retain the
sidereal view.













If you mapped this behaviour out on the sky by photographing the sun from a
fixed camera each day at exactly the same atomic clock time, it would appear
to trace out a figure-eight on the sky. (An analemma).


You create a paradox where there is none,to determine the 'same time'
every day you need to determine the equable 24 hour day first,the
only means to determine the 24 hour day is from the noon determination
when an Earth's longitude meridian rotates to face the Sun
directly.You are basically destroying the most elegant astronomical
correlation ever devised,the relationship between the natural unequal
day and how it generates the equable 24 hour day.





The actual analemma is lop-sided with one big loop and one small one,
because the Earth's orbit is eccentric. The shape is almost symmetric
because the dates of perihelion (around Jan 5) and aphelion (around July 4)
happen to be pretty close to the dates of the solstices.


The loss of the exquisite system that represents the sorting and
sifting of civilisation after civilisation back to remote antiquity
(so that you can have your distinctly analemmatic figure of 8) should
be intolerable for the participant you are addressing,I suppose it
keeps attension off linking the Earth's axial rotation directly to
stellar circumpolar motion so you lot can have your inertial
space,spacetime and all that other rubbish.It is the intellectual
equivalent of the burning of the library of Alexandria or the
stripping of the external facing stones from the Great Pyramid.




An excellent web site that explains the details with nice graphics and
equations is

http://www.analemma.com/

The links to their maths summaries will give you the equations you need to
code.

Many like you are convinced that the Earth's axial rotation through
360 degrees can be linked to stellar circumpolar motion but let the
guys who try to comprehend plate tectonics and the stresses between
constant axial rotation and variable orbital motion suffer you.

http://ottawa.rasc.ca/pictures/pdelorme/polaris.jpg