Space Forum / Amateur Astronomy / October 2005

To Rich

It would be an ideal time  to recognise that the orbital motion of Mars
passes close to the orbital motion of the Earth.

There is absolutely nothing difficult in recognising that the
geocentric plotting of the motion of Mars against the stellar
background transfers into a direct perception of where Mars is in
relation to our common motion around the Sun.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0112/JuSa2000_tezel.gif

The backwards arcs or apparent retrograde motion is simply a
consequence of the faster Earth overtaking the slower moving outer
planets and this is how Copernicus,Kepler and Galileo understood and
inferred heliocentricity.

It is a terrible injustice to everyone that less careful men like
Newton,having no astronomical sense of what goes into transfering
geocentric observations in heliocentric ones,assumed that retrograde
representations are assigned from a stationary Earth whereas since
Copernican heliocentricity,the plotted motions of the planets moving
against the stellar background are dropped altogether in their
heliocentric translations.

http://mitpress.mit.edu/journals/pdf/POSC_13_1_74_0.pdf

On page 86,most contemporary interpreters see the retrograde loops in
terms of the motion of Mars against a stationary Earth but anybody with
a love of astronomical intricacies will discern that the geocentric end
is the plotting of the motions of Mars against the stellar background
and the partially heliocentric end is the plotting of the motions of
Mars against Earth's orbital motion.This is why the retrograde loops
are represented close to the Earth's orbital path.

Sadly,a less careful mind assumed that the retrograde loops are
reflections of a stationary Earth and can be transfered directly into
the Copernican arrangement by placing the Sun at the center of the
'Pretzel' representation.The great Copernican subtlety is lost insofar
as the heliocentric experience is to absorb the principles for
heliocentricity by dropping the  stellar background reference  and
acknowledging through Kepler's 'pretzel' that he retained a geocentric
plotting and a partially heliocentric format and not a stationary Earth
as it has come to be understood.

Grabbing a telescope  does not make a person an astronomer,generosity
and sincerity alone  makes a person recognise their participation in
the great celestial motions.
The nobility of our pre-Copernican ancestors is celebrating  the
divisions of the cycles by climate,by the cycles of life in man and the
cosmos is not lost,even when the early Copernican heliocentrists
adopted and adapted their principles for pragmatic ends based on the
newly discovered principle of indepedent axial and orbital motion.

The cataloguers,in order to tie terrestial longitudes to the celestial
sphere departed from pure heliocentricity without qualifying the
procedure which lends itself to tying clocks to the calendar system and
from their on to astronomy.

The dilution of astronomical principles is the one real horror,even in
recognising the application of the sidereal system and clocks as a
throwback to an era where these things were real problems for
navigators,nothing can match the destructive influence visited on  some
astronomical principles that stretch back to remote antiquity.Even the
great transfer to heliocentric conceptions wither in this ugly shroud
which can be traced back to Flamsteed.

Being a Christian ,I respect the way in which our pre-Copernican
ancestors marked the great cycles  to which their lives were
conditioned  and do all I can to promote their accomplishments.Samhrain
or all souls eve (halloween) fills the air with that strange closeness
we have with the cosmos as we look out on it and since Copernicus,these
great things become even more enjoyable and mysterious without
destroying anything of the ancients who did the best they could with
what they knew.

I  suspect that a number of people here  will genuinely feel he
intimacy of this time of year as an inheritance of the highest
faculties of man in investigating celestial phenomena,something that is
more than mere fact and which binds us to older civilisations who knew
their was a mysterious significance to the approaching death and
renewal of a cycle of life.That Copernican heliocentricity displaces
the observed motions against the background stars to the annual orbital
motion of the Earth only enhances appreciation of the great cycles we
participate in and something that never grows old or tired and with
loving acknowledgement to our pre-heliocentric ancestors.

Perhaps in dead eyes  there is no mystery for all is number crunching
with fact as an end in itself but that never was the way of
astronomy,in its pre-heliocentric or heliocentric formats.As wisdom
comes with age,we no longer see that death is an end in itself for the
'love which moves the Sun and the other stars' passes through us in our
existence and only a hard shell of pretension  prevents people from
embracing their participation in the life of man as the same life of
all that is visible.

Mediocrity refuses to acknowledge evil as much as it refuses to enjoy
the goodness of life,our ancestors and especially all that is holy in
their lives,knew too well that we pass through cycles of existence
which no factual knowledge can substitute for.As men have fooled
themselves into believing that knowledge is an end in itself and there
is no mystery then they lose the driving force behind all human
creativity , astronomical, musical,poetical or otherwise.

The approaching days are indeed holy and the Christian adaption of that
holiness from the festivals of older cultures where the latitude
difference makes daylight/darkness asymmetry more pronounced are in
line with each other in the most complimentary and gentle way for the
generous of heart.

WRONG  The 29th TODAY at 11:20 pm  EDT