Testing the TYCHOS - stellar parallax and all

Simon Shack's (Tycho Brahe-inspired) geoaxial binary system. Discuss the book and website for the most accurate configuration of our solar system ever devised - which soundly puts to rest the geometrically impossible Copernican-Keplerian model.
simonshack
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Re: Testing TYCHOS: PVP Parallax Experiments

Unread post by simonshack »

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Hmm... Perhaps some folks at this large observatory were willing to run our little test? :P
"Remote solar observatory remains closed after mysterious evacuation" (September 14, 2018)
Nobody is quite sure what’s going on at the Sunspot Solar Observatory in New Mexico, which was quickly and mysteriously evacuated on 6 September amid reports of a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) probe, and has remained closed. The manager of the mountaintop site, the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), today released a statement saying the observatory “will remain closed until further notice due to an ongoing security concern.”
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/ ... evacuation
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Re: Testing TYCHOS: PVP Parallax Experiments

Unread post by heniek1812 »

This is very interesting. I had no clue that such a "problem" existed in a Universe that we have completely figured out and are instead concentrating on the sub sub atomic level. Just joking :-)
USNO and they basically refused to release the data to us,
What data is being refused that could be used to run this experiment ?

This is my first look at this parallax issue but I find it fascinating.

A very interesting and revealing discussion occurs here
https://physics.stackexchange.com/quest ... e-parallax

and this paper seems (I have not finished it) to be quite interesting also.
Title: The Accuracy of Trigonometric Parallaxes of Stars
Authors: Vasilevskis, S.
Journal: Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, vol. 4, p.57
Bibliographic Code: 1966ARA&A...4...57V
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1966ARA%26A...4...57V
kickstones
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Re: Testing TYCHOS: PVP Parallax Experiments

Unread post by kickstones »

simonshack » September 16th, 2018, 1:05 pm wrote:*
Hmm... Perhaps some folks at this large observatory were willing to run our little test? :P
"Remote solar observatory remains closed after mysterious evacuation" (September 14, 2018)
Nobody is quite sure what’s going on at the Sunspot Solar Observatory in New Mexico, which was quickly and mysteriously evacuated on 6 September amid reports of a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) probe, and has remained closed. The manager of the mountaintop site, the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), today released a statement saying the observatory “will remain closed until further notice due to an ongoing security concern.”
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/ ... evacuation
Apparently not, they closed the who facility down because a janitor was suspected of using the observatory’s WiFi network to download child pornography. :rolleyes:

https://www.rt.com/usa/438877-sunspot-o ... hild-porn/
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Re: Testing TYCHOS: PVP Parallax Experiments

Unread post by Mansur »

kickstones » September 20th, 2018, 11:33 am wrote:
simonshack » September 16th, 2018, 1:05 pm wrote:*
Hmm... Perhaps some folks at this large observatory were willing to run our little test? :P
"Remote solar observatory remains closed after mysterious evacuation" (September 14, 2018)
Nobody is quite sure what’s going on ...
Apparently not, they closed the who facility down because a janitor was suspected of using the observatory’s WiFi network to download child pornography. :rolleyes:

https://www.rt.com/usa/438877-sunspot-o ... hild-porn/
No, the cause was (multiple) UFO-sighting.

http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com ... d-and.html

(Or the an[nu]al leave of the institution.)

[Edit: pun inserted.]
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Re: Testing TYCHOS: PVP Parallax Experiments

Unread post by Kham »

6 SOLAR OBSERVATORIES WENT DOWN AT THE SAME TIME

Ken Wheeler uploaded a video on September 13th about the Solar Observatory getting shut down in New Mexico. After a little investigating he found out that several solar observatories all went down at the same time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys1o1d69lnQ
Mansur
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Re: Testing TYCHOS: PVP Parallax Experiments

Unread post by Mansur »

WTF IS GOING ON!?!
The question is much more that what the hell are they doing in these facilities, in these “solar and radio observatories” – when they are not shot down? Don’t think that too much for the “curiosities” of the astronomers – and that they would invest billion dollars without (very) palpable results.
British Astronomy - Large Telescopes
After the Second World War, the Royal Observatory moved out of London to less smoky, less light-polluted skies over Herstmonceux in the south of England, keeping its link with Greenwich in its new name, the Royal Greenwich Observatory (RGO). As celestial navigation became less important for ships and even less important for aircraft, the RGO shifted its emphasis from science applications towards pure research. In 1965 it was transferred from the control of the Royal Navy to one of the new British Government bodies set up to fund scientific research (research councils). This was the Science Research Council, later renamed the Science and Engineering Research Council. SERC’s remit was split in 1994 between the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC). This placed astronomy and particle physics side by side in the same organisation. In part this was to exploit common scientific structures and the convergence of the sciences in astroparticle physics, and in part to contain within the same boundary the two Big Sciences that used international scientific organisations with international subscriptions that had financial features (e.g. GDP growth, exchange rate fluctuations) that were problematic to the government and the other research councils. Some expected a battle to the death of the two sciences as the cuckoo grew in a smaller nest and squashed the other bird; this has not happened and the scientists have found common interests. PPARC is thus the current UK funding agency for astronomy….
https://www.google.hu/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... XvQK75oV4z
One commenter said I don’t remember where:
Maybe these huge radio telescopes like Jodrell Bank, UK are not designed to pick up weak signals from somewhere like Andromeda (or whatever nonsense they claim) but from somewhere like Australia instead.
["Peter" was -- here -- who said this.
viewtopic.php?p=2402772#p2402772 ]
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Re: Testing TYCHOS: PVP Parallax Experiments

Unread post by simonshack »

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MANY THANKS, PROFESSOR KAPTEYN !

Image

I feel compelled to express my warmest gratitude towards the stellar work of Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn (1851-1922). Kapteyn is considered as one the world's foremost experts in stellar motions and, in particular, for his unique "statistical" astronomy procedures. Under Kapteyn's "Plan of Selected Areas" according to which a number of observatories would coordinate their observational work of selected stellar regions, Kapteyn's astronomical laboratory provided the resources for reduction and analysis of data collected worldwide. His American colleague Frederick H. Seares famously stated that "Kapteyn presented the figure of an astronomer without a telescope. More accurately, all the telescopes of the world were his." (source: https://books.google.it/books?id=A7PA9E ... ld&f=false )

In other words, Kapteyn had vast resources at his disposal to carry through his statistical approach aimed at looking at the "big picture" of our stellar motions.

So why exactly, you may ask, would I be so very grateful for his work? Well, it all has to do with what he considered to be the major finding of his long and distinguished career, namely what became known as "STAR STREAMING". Fear not, laymen readers (and those of you with little patience for abstruse astronomical theories) - it really is nothing complicated at all. Quite simply, Kapteyn came to the conclusion that...

"The well-known Dutch astronomer, Professor Kapteyn, of Groningen, has lately reached the astonishing conclusion that a great part of the visible universe is occupied by two vast streams of stars travelling in opposite directions."
source: "Astronomy of To-Day" - by Cecil G. Dolmage (1910)

Image< https://books.google.it/books?id=r47qBw ... ns&f=false
Two more brief book extracts citing Kapteyn's STAR STREAMING theory:
http://septclues.com/TYCHOS/Kapteyn_Sta ... ing_01.jpg
http://septclues.com/TYCHOS/KapteynsFailure_01.jpg


Now, the notion that our surrounding stars would be divided in two groups moving in diametrically opposed directions may sound rather bizarre (to anyone accustomed to the idea that Earth revolves around the Sun). Yet, this is what this famous (Copernican) astronomer concluded. We shall now see how Professor Kapteyn may have reached his peculiar (yet ultimately illusory) conclusions - as viewed through the TYCHOS model's paradigm.

The TYCHOS model, of course, proposes that Earth rotates around its axis every 24 hours - and moves at a tranquil 1.6 km/h around its PVP orbit (while the Sun revolves around us once a year).

But, for the sake of the following little "thought exercise", let us imagine if Earth DID NOT ROTATE AROUND ITS AXIS - but only moved at 1.6 km/h.

Image

Joe and Jim would see the stars moving in opposite directions, that is, IF Earth did not rotate around its axis. In reality, of course, Earth DOES rotate around its axis once a day. Therefore, we always see the stars moving around us in ONE AND THE SAME direction at all times (whether we are in the Northern or the Southern hemisphere). And here's where it gets a bit complicated - so please bear with me for a few more minutes (after all, our planet's brightest astronomers have tried - in vain - to wrap their heads around this "mega-quiz" for centuries, nay, millenia!).

As you look at my above graphic, you may think that Joe will always measure a so-called "negative" parallax for all the "A" stars above him.
As you look at my above graphic, you may think that Jim will always measure a so-called "positive" parallax for all the "B" stars above him.

Furthermore:

As you look at my above graphic, you may think that Jim and Joe will always measure ZERO parallax for all the "C and D" stars.
(Let me remind you that "stellar parallax" means the lateral displacement of nearby stars against the very distant, "fixed" stars).

Not so: IT ALL DEPENDS ON THE TIME WINDOW WE CHOOSE TO MEASURE ANY STELLAR PARALLAX. Since no timestamps are to be found in official stellar parallax catalogues, their alleged "highly accurate data" is utterly useless. As it is, there are literally infinite combinations of time windows - which will all yield different parallax values.

This, because we all move around a trochoidal path every year - as thoroughly expounded and illustrated in my TYCHOS book.

For instance: if Jim decides to measure the parallax of a given star "P" over a full year, he will see star "P" moving in TWO DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED DIRECTIONS (in relation to the very distant, "fixed" stars) between a March>to>September period - and the successive September>to>March period :

Image

And here's another example showing how a given star "P" (located somewhere in the general direction of Earth's line of travel) can be measured to have either a 100% positive - OR a 100% negative- OR a (near) 0% parallax. It all depends on the TIME WINDOW chosen for the measurement !
Image

I know: your next question will be (the same as I had, some time ago): "how come none of our planet's greatest observatories haven't noticed these stellar parallax discrepancies ? And how come they haven't discussed and debated about it all?"

The simple answer to this question is : THEY HAVE ! - but this hasn't been much publicized - nor have these thorny issues ever been cleared up :

As documented by this 1966 academic paper by Stan Vasilevskis (of the famous Lick observatory), the four major American observatories were totally puzzled by the "disturbing differences", discrepancies and disagreements between their respective stellar parallax measurements:

"Parallaxes of the same stars determined by different observers and instruments often disagreed to such an extent that the reality of some parallaxes were in doubt. (...) Although the homogeneity has high statistical merit, the absence of various approaches makes it difficult to investigate and explain discrepancies between various determinations of parallaxes for the same stars. There are disturbing differences, and many investigations to be reviewed later have been carried out on these discrepancies. The present paper is a review of the present material, and a consideration of the possibilities of modifications in the technique of parallax determination in view of past experience and the present status of technology."
http://adsbit.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-i ... lassic=YES

Dear friends, you may now ask:

"If all the current stellar parallax measurements are meaningless (due to the impossible geometry of the Copernican model), why should any old theories such as Kapteyn's 'STAR STREAMING' be of any value insofar as supporting / validating the TYCHOS model?"

Well, here's why :

"Kapteyn continued with the more literal interpretation in constructing his Universe and interpreted the two streams as two systems rotating in opposite directions. The velocity of the two streams would be around 20 km/s, but in opposite directions."
source: "The Legacy of J.C. Kapteyn - studies on Kapteyn and the development of modern astronomy" - by P.C. Van Der Kruit and K. Van Berkel
https://books.google.it/books?id=AlZtCQ ... ns&f=false


Now, Kapteyn's approximate value of "20 km/s" has been more recently revised to 19.4 km/s:
https://www.tychos.info/citation/165B_Solar-Apex.htm and https://www.tychos.info/citation/165C_Antapex.htm

So let us first convert this value from km/s to km/h: 19.4 km/s = 69,840 km/h

If we now use my reduction factor of 42,633 (which I have expounded in Chapter 36 of my TYCHOS book), we obtain:

69,840 km/h / 42,633 ≈ 1.638 km/h - or VERY NEARLY my value of 1.601169 km/h for the orbital speed of Earth!

In other words, Kapteyn's lifetime efforts have (unwittingly) produced solid - or, if you will, "statistical"- evidence in support of the TYCHOS model.

Many thanks, Professor Kapteyn!
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Re: Testing TYCHOS: PVP Parallax Experiments

Unread post by patrix »

I feel compelled to express my warmest gratitude towards the stellar work of Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn
Pun intended? :D

But seriously, Many Thanks should also go out to You Simon for doing this! Its not easy to come up with such a significant discovery as this, and it's even harder to bear the complete lack of interest from the astronomical community. But truth will prevail, even if it will take some time.
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Re: Testing TYCHOS: PVP Parallax Experiments

Unread post by simonshack »

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MIGHT BETELGEUSE BE ROUGHLY THE SAME SIZE AS OUR SUN?

Image < Betelgeuse (pronounced "Beetlejuice" by the Northern Americans)

Tycho Brahe famously stated that he believed our Sun was roughly as large as the larger visible stars surrounding our solar system. He had extreme difficulty accepting the Copernican model - since its premises would imply that most of our large, visible stars had to be quite unimaginably gigantic (and senselessly distant).

The bright, reddish star Betelgeuse has long been considered as the largest star in our “nearby” cosmos. Modern astronomy reckons that its distance from Earth is roughly 640 light years – and that its diameter is a mind-boggling 950X (!) larger than our Sun. Imagine that: Betelgeuse (yes, that one star) would therefore be almost as large as our ENTIRE solar system! A truly challenging thought - and an extraordinary claim, if there ever was one... This brought me today to make a rough yet interesting verification of my own estimate of star distances - as proposed by my TYCHOS model.

From the Encyclopaedia Britannica :
The star is approximately 640 light-years from Earth. Betelgeuse is a red supergiant star roughly 950 times as large as the Sun, making it one of the largest stars known. https://www.britannica.com/place/Betelgeuse-star
Those who have taken the time to read my book will know that I reckon the stars to be roughly 42633X closer than “officially” believed. Of course, star distances are currently estimated by measuring the six-month parallax of a given star. This, because it is believed that, in six months, Earth covers its supposed orbital diameter of 299,200,000 km – and therefore, this distance is used as a trigonometric baseline to compute stellar distances. However, in the TYCHOS model, Earth only moves by 7018 km every six months. Yet, I do believe that the many stellar parallax measurements patiently performed by our best observational astronomers are valid and legitimate; they were just honestly (albeit erroneously) assuming that Earth revolves around the Sun.

Hence: 299,200,000 / 7018 = 42633 (i.e. the stars are roughly 42633X closer than currently believed)

So let’s see how this pans out with the “official” Betelgeuse data – via some simple maths.

My TYCHOS formula for converting so-called “light years” into AU (Astronomical Units) is:

OFFICIAL LIGHT YEAR VALUE X 1.48366 = TRUE DISTANCE (IN AU) OF A GIVEN STAR (1 AU is the distance between Earth and the Sun)

This, because 9,460,730,472,580.8 km (i.e. one “light year”) / 42633 = 1.48366

Therefore, if Betelgeuse is officially reckoned to be 640 LY away, in the TYCHOS it will be about 949.5 X further away than our sun:

640 X 1.48366 = 949.5424 AU

This, you will agree, is pretty darn close to the official “950X-larger-than-Sun” estimate!

***********************************************

Furthermore, we may also compare the observed angular diameter of Betelgeuse (as viewed through a telescope) – with the Sun’s observed angular diameter :

Angular diameter of the Sun : 1920” (arcseconds)

Angular diameter of Betelgeuse : approximately 0.0455” (arcseconds) *

*This is my averaged value of the two slightly different figures to be found on the English and Italian Wikipedia pages concerning Betelgeuse :
In 1920, Albert Michelson and Francis Pease mounted a 6-meter interferometer on the front of the 2.5-meter telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory. Helped by John Anderson, the trio measured the angular diameter of Betelgeuse at 0.047".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse

Nel 1919 Albert Michelson e Francis Pease montarono un interferometro, inventato da Michelson, sul telescopio da 2,5 metri dell'Osservatorio di Monte Wilson. Michelson compì una serie di misurazioni del diametro angolare della stella, ottenendo una misura pari a 0,044 secondi d'arco (").
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse


We see that : 1920" / 0.0455" = 42197.8

In other words, the angular / optical size (as viewed in telescopes) of Betelgeuse is about 42200 X smaller than the Sun.

This value is admittedly a bit “off” of my TYCHOS 42633 reduction value – yet one should take into account that Betelgeuse is known as a “pulsating star” - and so its reported angular size is somewhat variable / inconsistent throughout astronomy literature. For instance :“The angular diameter of Betelgeuse varies from 0.047" at maximum down to about 0.034" at minimum, since the star pulsates irregularly.” https://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/astro/starsiz.htm . Note however that, if I only had “cheated” a little (assuming that its true value is 0.0450355358525086", instead of my more “honest” 0.0455" averaged value), Betelgeuse would turn out to be precisely 42633X smaller than the Sun – as viewed through a telescope: 1920" / 0.0450355358525086" = 42633 (my TYCHOS reduction factor)

Hence, since Betelgeuse happens to appear roughly 42633X smaller than the Sun (in a telescope) - and since it is (in reality) only 950X further away than the Sun (and not 950 X 42633 = 40.5 million times [!] further away, as officially believed), it makes sense that the star is also believed to be about 950X larger than our Sun (i.e. 1,322,400,000 km in diameter!)

As we divide 1,322,400,000 km by 950, we get 1,392,000 km (just about our Sun's diameter). Betelgeuse may therefore be roughly as large as our Sun.





*****************************************

And now, for some pseudoscience trivia...

full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2yM_HkrDFQ
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Re: Testing TYCHOS: PVP Parallax Experiments

Unread post by Kham »

Wow Simon,

Stars are 42633 times closer than previously thought!!! Mind blowing! All of TYCHOS is mind blowing.

As a science fiction reader, what I loved most about it was the descriptions of incredible technologies, amazing worlds and the explanations of the geometries of our universe. Little did we know that our knowledge of our own solar system geometry was also science fiction as well as our endeavors into space.

I find it strangely satisfying in the fact that stars are closer to us, that our earth travels at a gentle one mile per hour, that the movement of our solar bodies have a predictable uniform circular motion which protects our earth as they circumnavigate around us. There is a sort of zen to TYCHOS.
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Re: Testing TYCHOS: Parallax Experiments

Unread post by simonshack »

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MARS PARALLAX? WHAT MARS PARALLAX?

As those familiar with my TYCHOS model will know, one of the main points (as illustrated in my book) that I put forth to falsify the Copernican model has to do with the Mars parallax - or lack thereof. Yet, I am still getting personal e-mails (from veteran astronomers and young astronomy students alike) who, basically, disagree in some way or another with my argumentations. Therefore, I now feel the need to elaborate on this matter and, hopefully, settle this controversial issue for good.

One of the more famous historical astronomical enterprises was that of Giovanni Domenico Cassini - as described at Wikipedia:

"In 1672, [Cassini] sent his colleague Jean Richer to Cayenne, French Guiana, while he himself stayed in Paris. The two made simultaneous observations of Mars and, by computing the parallax, determined its distance from Earth. This allowed for the first time an estimation of the dimensions of the solar system: since the relative ratios of various sun-planet distances were already known from geometry, only a single absolute interplanetary distance was needed to calculate all of the distances." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Domenico_Cassini

Here's a simple diagram (from a French astronomy website) illustrating the experiment that Cassini and his colleague Jean Richer carried out:

Image

For a more exhaustive description of Cassini's experiment, please read this fine post by Robert Frost over at Quora.

That's right: Cassini and Richer compared their simultaneous observations of Mars (from locations only 7000 kilometers apart) and, thanks to the PARALLAX exhibited by Mars against the starry background (and using simple trigonometry), they determined Mars's distance from Earth.

Image

In other words, these mere 7000 kilometers of separation between two earthly observers (Cassini and Richer) caused Mars to be noticeably displaced against the starry background. And this, using 17th-century telescopes! (As a brief aside, I find it rather amusing and ironic that 7000km just happens to be the distance covered by Earth in six months - more precisely 7018km - according to the TYCHOS model.)

Now, as viewed from Earth, Mars can reconjunct with the very same star in 546 days. For instance, between November 5, 2018 and May 4, 2020, Mars was (and will be) observed to reconjuct with the star Delta Capricorni (a.k.a "Deneb Algedi"). And here's where the Copernican model runs into dire problems.

The below screenshot is from a Copernican solar system simulator (the JS Orrery) depicting various Earth/Mars/Deneb Algedi alignments. I have highlighted the two afore-mentioned DATES (of November 2018 and May 2020) when Mars is observed to conjunct with that same star - at exactly 21h47min02s of Right Ascension. Note that Earth and Mars would (according to the Copernican model's geometry) both have moved laterally by about 300 million kilometers between DATE1 and DATE2 :

Image

So here's the question: if Cassini's experiment managed to detect some amount (however small) of parallax between Mars and the starry background, how could Mars possibly NOT exhibit any noticeable parallax against the stars if Earth and Mars were both displaced by 300,000,000 kilometers of longitude (see DATE 1 and DATE2 in above diagram) - as opposed to only 7000 km, such as in Cassini's experiment? To be sure, 300,000,000 km is about 42500X more than 7000km !

The thing is, Copernican astronomers wish to have it both ways: on one hand, they'll agree that Mars WILL exhibit a detectable parallax when viewed by two earthly observers 7000km apart - yet, on the other hand, they think Mars SHOULD NOT exhibit any detectable stellar parallax when earthly observers look at Mars (transiting at the very same celestial longitude) from two locations separated by 300 MILLION kilometers ("because the stars are sooo unimaginably far away"...) !

But wait: perhaps Mars and the star Deneb Algedi actually DO exhibit some noticeable parallax between DATE 1 and DATE2 ?
Let's see how the STAR ATLAS (another Copernican solar system simulator) depicts these two events:

Image

Can you see any noticeable parallax between Mars and Deneb Algedi in the above, superimposed screenshots from the Star Atlas? I can not. Keep in mind that, theoretically (that is, under the Copernican theory), they should exhibit a parallax roughly 42500 X times larger than the one observed by Cassini. Are we to believe that Cassini's 17th-century instruments were able to detect a parallax 42500X smaller than whatever parallax might be "lost in translation" (i.e. visually undetectable) in the modern Star Atlas simulator - due to its "insufficient pixel-resolution"?

The TYCHOS, of course, resolves this (Copernican) absurdity in the simplest possible manner. In reality, Mars always conjuncts with the star Delta Capricorni - aka "Deneb Algedi" - at that same celestial longitude (21h47min02s) - because that's where it always physically transits !

Image

I rest my case. The Copernican model is geometrically - and physically - impossible. -_-


*******
And now, check out and enjoy the latest (refined) version of the TYCHOSIUM 3D : https://codepen.io/pholmq/pen/XGPrPd
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Re: Testing TYCHOS: Parallax Experiments

Unread post by simonshack »

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ABOUT THE APPARENT SIZE OF THE STARS

The other day I came across this short yet most interesting academic paper titled :

"Galileo's measurement of the diameter of a star, and of the eye's pupil" - by David W. Hughes (2001)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2001JBAA..111..266H

The apparent angular diameter of the stars (as perceived from Earth by the human eye) has been one of the most hotly debated issues of astronomy - ever since the Copernican theory came along. Since the theory implied that the stars were hugely more distant than previously believed, it became imperative for the Copernican advocates to find some justification for the apparent size of the stars. This, because the stars in our skies (especially the largest / or closest "first magnitude stars") appear to our naked eyes to be far too large - if they were to be as distant as currently believed.

Let me use a real photograph of our night skies to illustrate the issue at hand. Note how the apparent diameter of star Sirius seems to be roughly the same size (or even a tad bigger) than that of planet Jupiter - as viewed from Earth by a naked-eye observer:

Image

That's right: if we were to trust our own eyes (something we may need to learn anew and start doing!), we would have to conclude that Sirius is about 8834X larger than the sun! That is, of course, assuming that Sirius is truly as distant as currently claimed (i.e. 8.6 light years - or 543,865X further away than the sun). Moreover, we would have to accept that all of the stars are many thousands of times larger than our own star. As it is, this is precisely what Tycho Brahe held as the most unacceptable notion put forth by the Copernicans: the absurdity of the mega-gigantic star sizes (and distances) that their model implied.

Over the last centuries, volumes of science literature have sought to explain the apparent optical aberration of the observed star sizes. Ironically, it was a famed technological advancement (the telescope) that ultimately provided the Copernicans with some tentative "justification" to the pesky problem - courtesy of the British Astronomer Royal George Airy. Today, young astronomers are taught that the observed dimensions of the points of light emanating from the stars are spurious (being artificially enlarged as they traverse Earth's atmosphere). In telescopes, a phenomenon known as "diffraction" would cause the angular diameter of the stars to appear larger than they are in reality. Here's a quote from Wikipedia describing "the Airy disk":

AIRY DISK
"The resolution of optical devices is limited by diffraction. So even the most perfect lens can't quite generate a point image at its focus, but instead there is a bright central pattern now called the Airy disk, surrounded by concentric rings comprising an Airy pattern. The size of the Airy disk depends on the light wavelength and the size of the aperture. John Herschel had previously described the phenomenon, but Airy was the first to explain it theoretically. This was a key argument in refuting one of the last remaining arguments for absolute geocentrism: the giant star argument. Tycho Brahe and Giovanni Battista Riccioli pointed out that the lack of stellar parallax detectable at the time entailed that stars were a huge distance away. But the naked eye and the early telescopes with small apertures seemed to show that stars were disks of a certain size. This would imply that the stars were many times larger than our sun (they were not aware of supergiant or hypergiant stars, but some were calculated to be even larger than the size of the whole universe estimated at the time). However, the disk appearances of the stars were spurious: they were not actually seeing stellar images, but Airy disks. With modern telescopes, even with those having the largest magnification, the images of almost all stars correctly appear as mere points of light."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bi ... #Airy_disk
In short, Airy claimed that we cannot trust our eyes when it comes to judging the angular diameters of the stars, since they are distorted/enlarged as they traverse Earth's atmosphere. However, there's an obvious problem with Airy's theory: why then wouldn't the points of light emanating from our planets (e.g. Jupiter) be similarly affected? Doesn't the light coming from our planets also traverse our atmosphere - much as that emitted by the stars? Of course it does.

Tycho Brahe's estimate of the angular diameter of star VEGA (a so-called "1st magnitude star") was 120" arcseconds - or only about 16 times smaller than the angular diameter subtended by the sun (1920" arcseconds). Now, many of you will probably scoff at such a "generous" estimate of the size of VEGA - yet here's a simple comparative graphic I made to illustrate what this would look like:

Large dot: the SUN______Small dot: a 1st magnitude star - such as VEGA (visually 16X smaller than the sun, according to Tycho Brahe)
Image

That's right: the small dot is only 16X smaller than the big one (representing the sun). All in all, it doesn't look too different from what we can see - in reality - with our own eyes, does it? Please also peruse the real photograph of our night skies posted above: you may compare the observed angular diameter of the moon (which subtends the same angular diameter as the sun) with the observed angular diameter of star Sirius. Do the two look much different (proportionally) from the dots in my above graphic? As your own eyes can see, Tycho Brahe's observation (that 1st magnitude stars were only 16X smaller than the sun) seems quite reasonable.

Further on, consider this: VEGA (the second-brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere, after Arcturus), is currently believed to be 1,583,000 X (i.e. more than 1.5 Million times!) further away than our sun, i.e. 25.04 light years away. Yet, VEGA's diameter is claimed to be only about 2.3 X larger than the sun! So, imagine if I should first enlarge (by 2.3X) the big dot in my above comparative graphic - AND THEN SCALE IT DOWN 1.5 MILLION TIMES (!!!)... Would it possibly be visible from Earth with our naked eyes AT ALL? I honestly do not think so - and I would certainly question such a surreal notion. In light of this, I trust you will concede that Tycho Brahe's estimate would seem to be far more realistic than what is currently claimed.

The gist of the above-mentioned paper by David Hughes is to praise Galileo (a staunch promoter of the Copernican model) for how he "ingeniously explained" why the stars only appear to be much larger than would be expected. Again, Tycho Brahe's main objection to the Copernican model was that our many visible stars could not be so hugely distant - or else they would ALL have to be hugely larger than our sun. Brahe reckoned instead that the (true) respective diameters of the visible stars were more homogeneous, i.e. only somewhat larger or smaller than our sun (as opposed to thousands of times larger).

Let us now compare the proposed angular diameters of the star VEGA - as estimated by GALILEO, TYCHO and MODERN SCIENCE:

GALILEO GALILEI's estimate of VEGA's angular diameter: 5" arcseconds

TYCHO BRAHE's estimate of VEGA's angular diameter: 120" arcseconds

MODERN SCIENCE estimate of VEGA's angular diameter: 0.0029" arcseconds

**********************************************************************************************************

We see that today, MODERN SCIENCE estimates the angular diameter of VEGA to be:

1724X smaller than GALILEO's estimate
41379X smaller than TYCHO's estimate

At this point, we should pause for a moment - and wonder how such "astronomical discrepancies" can even occur: were both Galileo and Brahe completely inept? Or could it possibly be that modern science has had to fudge with the apparent angular diameter of the stars in order to try and rescue the Copernican model from its inevitable demise? To be sure, if star Vega truly were located 1.5 MILLION times further away (and only 2.3X larger than our sun), it would have to subtend a microscopic angular diameter of about 0.0029" (as currently claimed). The problem is: this is more than 20500X smaller than the angular resolution of the human eye (approx. 60" arcseconds) - meaning that we would all need Superman's krypton-vision to see it with our naked eyes!... Yet, in reality, Vega is one of the very brightest "naked eye stars" in our skies !

You may thus justly ask yourselves: "how do astronomers explain how we can see such a small and distant point of light with our naked eyes?" Well, they will tell you that Vega is about 40 times more luminous than the sun - and since our night skies are very dark (as opposed to the shiny stars), that's why we can see them even if they are enormously distant. But what about even much more distant stars than Vega? Well, they'll tell you, for instance, that the luminosity of Deneb (a star supposedly 2600 light years away, i.e. more than 100X more distant than Vega) is "somewhere between 55,000 and 196,000 times that of the sun." (quote from Wikipedia). Good Heavens! Does this sound remotely "scientific"? In light of this, you may be forgiven for suspecting that (Copernican) astronomers are perhaps living in a surreal fantasy world of their own - while just making things up as they go along trying to make sense of their own "sacred" model.

Needless to say, I strongly believe that Tycho Brahe was closer to the truth. His estimate of VEGA's apparent angular diameter was 41379X larger than the value now claimed by modern science. As it happens, my TYCHOS model proposes that the stars are about 42633X closer than currently believed. A pretty good agreement, don't you think?

***********

Addendum: so how large is VEGA in reality?

Let's do the (simple) maths - and see if we may at least "rescue" the notion that VEGA is 2.3X larger than the sun - as officially claimed :

VEGA is claimed to be 25.04 light years away. In the TYCHOS model, 1 light year = 1.48366 AU (i.e. 42633X less than 1 light year).

Hence: Earth >VEGA distance : 25.04 X 1.48366 = 37.15 AU.

Remember now that Tycho Brahe estimated VEGA's angular diameter (as seen from Earth) to be about 16X smaller than our sun.

Well, if Vega is truly 37.15 times further away than the sun (and appears to be 16X smaller), this would indeed make Vega about 2.3X larger than the sun :

37.15/16 = 2.321875

*****************

In summary :

- Tycho Brahe may have been right all along about the visible size of Vega (and the stars in general).

- My proposed reduction factor of 42633 (for the currently estimated star distances) may well be correct - as it seems to agree with Brahe's observations.

- If the stars are 42633X less distant than currently reckoned, their true diameters may not necessarily need to be 42633X smaller than current values. To be sure, further study is needed in the field of optical astronomy, a branch of cosmology rife with controversy still today. In any event, the spiny question of the actual star sizes and how they are affected by various phenomena (e.g. "Airy disk", assorted Optical Aberrations, etc.) is far from being a settled matter.
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Re: Testing the TYCHOS - stellar parallax and all

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*

THE HILARIOUS TALE OF MERCURY'S "ANOMALOUS" PRECESSION


Dear readers, I will hereby do my best to summarize (in simple layman's terms and maths) this historically crucial, worldwide scientific debate - namely "the mystery of the anomalous precession of Mercury's perihelion". In this raging debate, no less than Newton's "sacrosanct" Laws were at stake - since Mercury was observed to disobey the same. Eventually, "victory" went to Mr. Albert Einstein, thus rocketing the little-known patent clerk (and proven plagiarist) to universal fame - literally overnight. By all accounts, Einstein's fledgling theory of relativity was gloriously confirmed by his (dreadfully convoluted) "explanation" of Mercury's seemingly anomalous behavior. The "Theory of General Relativity" was born.

The whole issue revolved around a small 43" (arcseconds) discrepancy of Mercury's precessional motion around the Sun : Mercury had been observed (by Urbain Le Verrier) to precess by an excess of 43" per century - a fact which contradicted Newton's Laws.

As it is, at the end of Chapter 28 of my TYCHOS book, I pointed out a few facts that appeared to be more than coincidental :

Extract from Chapter 28 of The TYCHOS - our geoxial binary system" - by Simon Shack (2018):
At the time of the vivid debate set off by Le Verrier about Mercury, the equinoctial precession was observed to be about 5026” (arcsecsonds) per century. Since Mercury’s perihelion was observed to precess by 5600” per century (of which 531” were deemed to be caused by the “gravitational tugs” of the other planets) the whole controversy revolved around the supposedly anomalous 43 extra arcseconds per century attributed to Mercury’s precession.

As the story goes, the mystery of these pesky 43 extra arcseconds could not be solved by Newton’s gravitational theories, but were then ‘elegantly resolved’ by Einstein’s convoluted GR.

I have no desire to add more fuel to the century-long inferno concerning Mercury’s allegedly anomalous precession. Yet, I feel compelled to ask if I might at least approach the problem with new insight.

As such, I wish to highlight some points that I find more than coincidental:

The allegedly anomalous precession of Mercury was 43” per century.

As already mentioned above, the observed equinoctial precession was, at the time, 5026” per century. Now, if we divide 5026 by Mercury’s synodic period we obtain:

5026” / 116.88 days ≈ 43”

In the TYCHOS, the equinoctial precession is caused by Earth’s 1-mph-motion. The Sun revolves once around Earth in ca. 365.25 days.
The DAILY equinoctial precession (back in the early 1900’s) would thus have amounted to :

5026” / 36,525 ≈ 0.1376”

Since Mercury, a moon of the Sun, revolves 3.125 X around the Sun every year,

116.88 X 3.125 = 365.25

We see that: 3.125 X 0.1376” = 0.43” - i.e. 1/100th of the alleged 43” per century “anomaly”
Now, you may ask yourself, why did (most of) our world's astronomers agree that Mercury precesses by an "anomalous extra amount" of 43" (arcseconds) per century?

It has gradually dawned upon me that the answer to this question may well be almost hilariously simple (although this lingering realization of mine never made it into the book). Let me first remind you of a basic difference between the COPERNICAN and the TYCHOS models:

- The COPERNICAN model has Earth revolving around Mercury once every year.
whereas...
- The TYCHOS model has Mercury revolving around Earth once every year.

Hence, since Copernicans assume that Earth laps Mercury each year (thus "subtracting one 360°rotational unit" from its gyrations), they will naturally surmise that Earth needs ONE more rotation (i.e. one more day) to complete its yearly circling around Mercury. Therefore, their measurements of Mercury's annual precession will erroneously include one extra day of its motions; as we saw above, this amounts to 0.43" of Mercury's precessional progression. Thus, Mercury will appear (to Copernican astronomers) to precess each year by an extra 0.43" - or by an extra 43" per century!

To be sure, I am by no means the first person on this planet that has concluded that the alleged "anomalous" precession of Mercury's perihelion is spurious and that, consequently, Einstein's very first "proof" of his nebulous theory of General Relativity was based on thin air... For instance, here is what the eminent professor Roger A. Rydin wrote about the subject:

"The question now is whether or not the excess shift of the perihelion of Mercury is real and has been properly explained in terms of General Relativity, or if there are other reasons for the observations. There are significant arguments that General Relativity has not been proven experimentally, and that it contains mathematical errors that invalidate its predictions. Vankov has analyzed Einstein’s 1915 derivation and concludes that when an inconsistency is corrected, there is no perihelion shift at all!"
https://www.tychos.info/citation/126A_M ... ession.pdf


It should therefore be of no surprise that Einstein never returned to the issue of Mercury's precession in his later GR writings, as pointed out by Vankov:

"Einstein’s paper devoted to the GR prediction of Mercury’s perihelion advance, Doc.24 (see Notes), is the only one among his publications that contains the explanation of the GR effect. In his following paper "The Foundations of the General Theory of Relativity", 1916, Doc.30, Einstein presents his new (he called it “correct”) calculation of the bending of light while the Mercury perihelion is only mentioned by referring it as in Doc.24, along with Schwarzshild’s work on “the exact solution”. Since then, to our knowledge, he never returned to the methodology of the GR perihelion advance problem [of Mercury - ed]."
https://www.tychos.info/citation/124A_V ... tivity.pdf


In any event, if my above interpretation / delucidation of the alleged anomaly of Mercury's precession is correct, I dare say it has to be the simplest debunking of Einsteins' General Relativity to have ever been put forth. :)

Make no mistake - this is no petty matter (as it may appear to the layman): the ultimate implications of all this are far-reaching - not least because it means that the currently-accepted black hole physics ... is plain nonsense! https://youtu.be/rv5GJCkI-bk?t=1457
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Re: Testing the TYCHOS - stellar parallax and all

Unread post by simonshack »

*
Dear all,

Today I have updated a post I made on page 1 of this thread back in May 2018.

This is hoping that those interested in the TYCHOS model will set aside a few minutes to check it out:

HOW "NEGATIVE" STELLAR PARALLAXES WERE SWEPT UNDER THE RUG
viewtopic.php?p=2405802#p2405802
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Re: Testing the TYCHOS - stellar parallax and all

Unread post by simonshack »

*

THE TYCHOS CLARIFIES THE STELLAR PARALLAX CONFUSION

Dear friends,

I do realize that the question of stellar parallax is a rather tough and complex subject matter. In fact, my head almost exploded the other day, as I realized that astronomers in the Northern Hemisphere might reach the opposite conclusions (in terms of stellar parallax measurements) of those astronomers located in the Southern Hemisphere of our planet. All in all though, and in spite of its somewhat daunting complexity, I think you'll find this to be a truly fascinating discovery journey. In any event, this is certainly the case for yours truly, since my TYCHOS model keeps clarifying things for me - every step of the way! I shall now share with you my latest realizations concerning one of the most spiny and confusing areas of astronomy: namely, the question of stellar parallax, and more specifically, the well-documented and undeniable existence of NEGATIVE stellar parallax. Of course, NEGATIVE parallax cannot exist under the Copernican / heliocentric paradigm: since Earth is believed to revolve around the Sun, we would thus only see the stars moving in the SAME direction - at all times. Only POSITIVE stellar parallax can physically exist in the Copernican model. Let me now quote from a fine treatise of historical astronomy:

"In 1674 the first of Robert Hooke's Cutlerian lectures was published. Entitled "An attempt to prove the movement of the Earth from observations", it concerned what Hooke called an experimentum crucis, the outcome of which was intended to establish the truth of the Copernican system. The 'proof' was to consist of a measurement of annual stellar parallax. There is no doubt about Hooke's motive in this case: he wished to provide evidence which, he believed, would demolish the arguments of the "anti-Copernicans". In order to do this he gave serious thought to the type of instrument he should use and to the choice of star to observe."

Hence, we can see that the question of stellar parallax was no petty matter: as it were, the entire Copernican heliocentric theory was at stake! Yet, at the time (late 17th century) no stellar parallax had been observed. When Friedrich Bessel finally (in 1838) announced that star 61Cygni exhibited some parallax, the world's scientific community took it as a firm confirmation of the Copernican model. We shall now see how the TYCHOS model can provide more sensible answers as to the cause of the observed stellar parallax and, more importantly, as to the existence of the so-called "NEGATIVE" parallax.

Let's start by looking at how our current Gregorian year count (of our solar and sidereal years) causes the Sun to slowly "slip out of synch" with Earth's motion around its PVP orbit. This, because the Gregorian calendar was devised (by the Church) so as to try and make Easter NOT slip out of synch over time with our earthly calendar. In fact, the ancient Sothic cycle also attempted to keep Sirius rising "in synch" with the Egyptian civil calendar. The Egyptians, we may say, have had far more luck with their choice of star Sirius as a marker for their calendar, since Sirius has a large ("NEGATIVE") proper motion. In other words, Sirius moves transversally (i.e. its proper motion) very much in the same "clockwise" direction as Earth slowly moves around its PVP orbit (at 1mph) and therefore, its heliacal rise dates have remained remarkably "stable" for several millennia - as documented in this chart :

Image
     
Note that the average year in both the Gregorian and the Sothic calendars have similar year-count reckonings of about 365.25 days. Hence, we have a clear explanation as to why Sirius's heliacal rise date has remained pretty stable ever since ancient times): Sirius has "stayed with us" for a few thousands of years due its proper motion that "follows" Earth - but also due to the Gregorian calendar letting Earth rotate annually by a bit more than 360°(as it were, by 0.021308°- as will be explained further on) :

Image 

However, here's the "problem": neither the Gregorian nor the Sothic calendars are sustainable over longer periods of time, as they cannot forever keep "compensating" for the fact that Earth moves around its PVP orbit. In the long run, both calendars will run into trouble. This, because they let the Sun "drift too much Eastwards" (or, perhaps more correctly put, they let Earth rotate "too much Eastwards"). This following graphic illustrating the difference between a "solar" (or "tropical") year and a "sidereal"year should speak more than a thousand words. Here's what happens :

Image
 
Note that the "unobservable" part of the annual / constant "Eastward drift" of the stars (which is nothing but what we call "General Precession" - a.k.a."the precession of the equinoxes") represents ca. 1.68% of the total drift. It is "unobservable" because Copernican astronomers are unaware of Earth's yearly "Westwards" displacement of 14036km. And in fact, the difference between the currently-observed annual precession (50.29") and the true annual "precession"/ i.e. yearly Earth motion (51.136” - as of the TYCHOS) is ca. 1.68%. This is also why the TYCHOS estimation of the duration of a Great Year (25344 years) is 1.68% shorter than the officially-estimated duration of 25771 years. 

Note also that the observed precession has not always been 50.29". It has kept "mysteriously" increasing in the last centuries; this is actually one of the great unsolved riddles of astronomy, and one which caused much trouble to the famed astronomer/mathematician Simon Newcomb who tried, in vain, to compute a fix/constant increase of the secular precession : as all modern astronomers know full well, the rate of increase is NOT constant / linear: it is exponential (yet they have no rational explanation for it!). In Chapter 30 of my TYCHOS book, you will find this graphic which, I dare say, neatly resolves this longlasting and still unexplained puzzle:

Image
 

To return to the problem of the Gregorian calendar "letting the Sun drift too much Eastwards", my next graphic illustrates what this will ultimately entail (over the coming millennia - and ultimately, over a full Great Year). If we choose, say, June 21 (the Northern Hemisphere's Summer Solstice) as our "calendar marker", here is how our Summer Solstice will gradually "slip Eastwards". That is, if we should keep using our current Gregorian calendar count :

Image

This, you may agree, is not a desirable thing! It means that, in 25344 years time (see the Sun's position 12 in my above graphic), our Winter Solstice and Summer Solstice will be inverted, June 21 thus occurring when the Sun is LOWEST in our (Northern Hemisphere's) skies! In Chapter 31 of my book I show how this can be prevented by simply shortening the current duration of our calendar years by about 5.1146 seconds of time (or, what amounts to the same, to "shorten" our day count by about 14 milliseconds). This would accomplish the smoothest possible (i.e. most gradual and "un-traumatic") transition of our current calendar count towards the desirable "re-synchronization" of the Sun's and the Earth's respective revolutions - as proposed by the TYCHOS. Here is how the Sun and Earth would be ideally (and harmoniously) get "re-synchronized" - if we were to implement my proposed, ideal TYCHOS calendar year count :

Image
 
I shall now further clarify the rather "tricky" question of stellar parallaxes - and what such measurements would entail within the TYCHOS model. My next graphic shows the trochoidal path around which any earthly observer (or fixed telescope) will be carried in the course of the year. We may easily imagine how, depending on WHICH time interval (A,B,C, or D) is chosen to measure a given star's parallax, astronomers will obtain variable and consequently, wildly conflicting results (such as can be found all over historical astronomy literature.

Image

It should be easily envisioned how and why the parallactic displacement of any given "nearby" star will depend on the time interval chosen to measure it (and, of course, depending on the given star's celestial location). Two astronomers measuring the same star (but choosing different time intervals to measure it) may well end up with wholly different / conflicting results. The possible combinations and consequent measurements (collected by two astronomers monitoring the same star but at different times of the year) are virtually endless.

In fact, in an academic paper of 1966, Stan Vasilevskis (of the famous Lick observatory), reported how the four major American observatories were totally puzzled by the disturbing differences, discrepancies and disagreements between their respective stellar parallax measurements:

"Parallaxes of the same stars determined by different observers and instruments often disagreed to such an extent that the reality of some parallaxes were in doubt. (...) Although the homogeneity has high statistical merit, the absence of various approaches makes it difficult to investigate and explain discrepancies between various determinations of parallaxes for the same stars. There are disturbing differences, and many investigations to be reviewed later have been carried out on these discrepancies. The present paper is a review of the present material, and a consideration of the possibilities of modifications in the technique of parallax determination in view of past experience and the present status of technology."
http://adsbit.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-i ... lassic=YES

To be sure, the history of the extremely difficult and laborious search for stellar parallaxes is riddled with accounts of "inexplicable" conflicting results (and of the vexing yet undeniable existence of NEGATIVE stellar parallax). Those accounts, buried in the vast amounts of relevant astronomy literature, may be somewhat hard to find - but this should be of no surprise, since the very existence of NEGATIVE stellar parallax is the nemesis of the Copernican model : to admit its existence would be tantamount to admit the IMPOSSIBILITY of the heliocentric geometry. In the literature, the numerous instances of NEGATIVE stellar parallax observations are thus, unsurprisingly, regularly dismissed and swept under the rug with claims of "obvious errors of observation" - or other assorted ad hoc "explanations".

Today, even ESA (the European Space Agency) claims that the reason why 25% [or HALF of the stars which show any parallax at all] listed in their huge million-star "TYCHO" catalogue exhibit negative parallax values is due to ..."systematic errors". One can only wonder just how ESA can keep claiming such things while, at the same time, assuring us that their alleged "Hipparcos satellite" (and its successor, the "Gaia satellite") are capable of collecting stellar parallax measurements within an error margin / resolution of "better than 0.001 arcseconds" (i.e. 1 milliarcsecond!!!). This glaring contradiction has, thankfully, been noticed by a number of attentive independent researchers in recent years. Does ESA ever reply to these people? Apparently not.

For example, Vittorio Goretti (1939-2016), a distinguished Italian astronomer who - with good reasons - questioned ESA's catalogues for many years, never received any reply from ESA. Here's a short extract from a 2013 paper of his:
"The Hipparcos Catalogue stars, about 118,000 stars, are a choice from the over 2,000,000 stars of the Tycho Catalogue. As regards the data concerning the same stars, the main difference between the two catalogues lies in the measurement errors, which in the Hipparcos Catalogue are smaller by about fifty times. I cannot understand how it was possible to have such small errors (i. e. uncertainties of the order of one milliarcsecond) when the typical error of a telescope with a diameter of 20÷25 cm [as the telescope ESA claims was mounted on their Hipparcos satellite] is comprised between 20 and 80 milliarcseconds (see the Tycho Catalogue). When averaging many parallax angles of a star, the measurement error of the average (root-mean-square error) cannot be smaller than the average of the errors (absolute values) of the single angles." http://www.vittoriogoretti-observatory6 ... -jan-2013/
But this is by no means the only problem that Vittorio Goretti found with ESA's stellar parallax catalogues. I am currently in the process of translating Goretti's best papers to the English language. In short, Goretti made some quite astonishing findings which very seriously question the credibility of the public institution known as "ESA" (financed by the European taxpayers) - much like NASA is by the American taxpayers. In spite of Goretti's distinguished astronomy career and credentials (read about his discovery of 32 main-belt asteroids here - "The main-belt asteroid 7801 Goretti has been named in his honour"), ESA simply ignored his many requests for clarification. This may come as no surprise to most Cluesforum readers, since we now know what NASA ("Never A Straight Answer") has been up to - ever since its very inception, on the 29th of July 1958, when T. Keith Glennan (former studio director at the Paramount and Goldwyn-Mayer Hollywood studios) was inaugurated on October 1,1958 as NASA's first administrator...

In light of this, I trust that most of my readers may understand and appreciate why I am more inclined to lend more trust & credence to independent (yet highly qualified) voices such as Vittorio Goretti's - in REAL matters of astronomy. Similarly, I also tend to place more trust in the collective work of the best astronomers of yesteryear (prior to the 20th century and before the clownish, artificial "geniuses" like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking stole the scene) - rather than in our modern-day, arrogant and impermeable-to-critique "science churches" such as NASA and ESA, locked up as they are in their impenetrable ivory towers built in Hollywood.

BESSEL's NEGATIVE STELLAR PARALLAXES

Perhaps the most ironic "twist" of the entire history of stellar parallax detection is the fact that Bessel, the man credited for making the very FIRST "indisputable stellar parallax determination", initially detected and announced NEGATIVE parallaxes, not only for the star 61Cygni, but also for Cassiopeaie - and even for our very North Star, Polaris! Here's an extract from one of the many books written by sharp astronomy historians that I have devoured over the years:
"But Bessel was to be disappointed again: when he had finished the reduction of the position of 61 Cygni relative to the six different stars he was forced to the conclusion that its parallax was negative! The paper in which this result was announced took the form of a report only, with no explanation of why a negative answer might have been obtained. Bessel gave tables of observations, and results of the application of the method of least squares to these observations for each comparison in turn; he followed this with exactly the same information for μ Cassiopeiae which he had compared with θ Cassiopeiae. For this star also he had a negative, though numerically smaller result. In volume III of the Konigsberg observations Bessel gave another set of observations, this time of the difference of right ascension between α and 61 Cygni from which he deduced an even larger negative result for the parallax of 61 Cygni. A different account may be constructed from Bessel's private correspondence. In a letter to Olbers written at about the time that the first set of negative results for 61 Cygni was published, Bessel stated that :

" The negative parallax which one [found]
here and there and which [he had] in fact
found for the Pole Star from Bradley's
observations [was] of course the result
of observational errors".

Full source text backed up here: http://septclues.com/TYCHOS/Williams-ME ... Thesis.pdf
So the question becomes: since ESA, still today, claims that "NEGATIVE stellar parallaxes are just a matter of observational errors", for HOW LONG will the astronomy establishment be able to get away with this preposterous and undefendable "observational error"excuse?


"NEGATIVE" STELLAR PARALLAXES ARE NOT OBSERVATIONAL ERRORS

I shall now address the "mystery" as to why the values / magnitudes of the (ca. 25%) NEGATIVE parallax values listed in the official stellar parallax catalogues are generally far smaller (numerically) than the magnitudes of the (ca. 25%) POSITIVE parallax values.

To be sure, the TYCHOS model expects precisely what is observed (and listed in the official catalogues), namely that the values of the NEGATIVE stellar parallaxes are systematically smaller than the values of POSITIVE parallaxes. Here follow two more graphics which should clarify this matter. But first, a short reminder (and a brief computation) is in order, concerning our Gregorian calendar count:

As expounded above, the Gregorian calendar lets Earth rotate each year by slightly more than 360°. The extra annual rotation amounts to 0.021308°. This, because under the Gregorian year count (as of the TYCHOS reckonings) Earth is expected to complete an [undesirable] extra 1.5 full rotations over the course of a Great Year. Hence, the TYCHOS proposes to shorten our annual rotations by 5.1146 seconds - which is equivalent to 0.021308° of one Earthly rotation (in fact, in 25344 years - a TYCHOS Great Year - this will "trim / eliminate" 1.5 Earth rotations: 0.021308°X 25344 = 540°, or 1.5 X 360°). Now, since we are currently letting Earth rotate a tad more than 360° each year, this will affect / distort our stellar parallax measurements in the manner illustrated below:

Image

This goes some way to explain why the magnitudes of the observed NEGATIVE paralaxes are generally smaller than the POSITIVE parallax values. However, a second geometric cause (related to our yearly trochoidal path*) concurs to explain why NEGATIVE parallaxes are generally smaller:
* Any observers on Earth (and their telescopes) will be gyrating annually around the below-illustrated trochoidal loop.

Image

If two astronomers (JOE and JIM - located in our Northern Hemisphere) were to measure the parallax of star 72 Ophiuchi,(JOE choosing the period "A" and JIM choosing the period "D") here's what would they would conclude:

-JOE (choosing the March 2000 > Sept 2000 time interval) would conclude that the star has a (large, "100%") POSITIVE parallax
-JIM (choosing the Sept 2000 > March 2001 time interval) would conclude that the star has a (far smaller, ca."30%") NEGATIVE parallax

(Note also that if JOE and JIM instead would have chosen period B and period C, they would both probably fail to detect ANY parallax at all for 72 Ophiuchi). And in fact, 50% of all the stellar parallax values in ESA's largest "TYCHO" catalogue exhibit a ZERO [i.e. non-detectable amount of] parallax).

100% POSITIVE versus 30% NEGATIVE? Well, that is very interesting indeed. It so happens that, back in the days when stellar parallax detection was the most vividly debated topic among that epoch's top astronomers (e.g. Bessel, Hooke, Bradley, Struve, Huygens, Herschel, Cassini, Maskelyne, Lacaille, Lalande, et al), their first obvious choice of a star to measure was Sirius (the very brightest star in our skies). All of their observations of the Sirius parallax were conflicting, but what is of strong interest to the TYCHOS is to compare their stated maxima and minima values of their measurements: the largest parallax reported for Sirius at the time was 8"(eight arcseconds) - whereas the lowest was 2.5" arcseconds, although "in the wrong direction"!

"After thus disposing of Lacaille's Cape observations, Lalande referred to a series of observations made at Paris between the summer of 1761 and early 1762, during which time Sirius appeared to have been displaced by a more realistic 2.5". but this displacement could not be
owing to parallax because it was in the wrong direction."
Source back up: http://septclues.com/TYCHOS/Williams-ME ... Thesis.pdf

If we do a little math, we see that 2.5"(the NEGATIVE parallax of Sirius reported back in those days) is roughly 30% of 8" (the largest POSITIVE parallax reported back in those days). Note also that Sirius (being located as "low" as -16°42' of declination) is best viewed in the Southern Hemisphere, so while some were made in Paris or London, many of those Sirius observations were made in Cape Town (South Africa), at the famous Cape of Good Hope observatory. Therefore, we may reasonably assume that the reported (and starkly conflicting) maxima and minima values of Sirius's parallax (8" POSITIVE and 2.5" NEGATIVE) originated from those Southern Hemisphere observations. Let's see how this would have played out, under the TYCHOS' perspective:

Image

Indeed, we would expect (under the TYCHOS paradigm) that the largest and smallest parallax of Sirius would be, when choosing period A or when choosing period D, respectively in the proportion of "100% POSITIVE" or "30% NEGATIVE". However, as we saw earlier, Sirius also has a fairly large transverse proper motion parallel to the direction of Earth's motion (which keeps its heliacal rise date fairly stable). Hence, Sirius is a bit of a special case. In any event, this all goes to show the complexity (and the many possible variables) which come into play when measuring stellar parallax. It is therefore no wonder this caused so much confusion for the astronomers of yesteryear - and continues to do so today.

All in all, it would appear that the TYCHOS may gradually resolve, one by one, the many historical puzzles & conundrums of astronomy. :)
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