Re: You are cataloguers,not astronomers
- From: geraldkelleher@xxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: 4 May 2005 12:48:10 -0700
To Klazmon
Go ask Mr Petersen,he wrote it.
Look,cataloguers are content with their position and to be fair,they
do love their telescopes and star charts.They might detest everything
that theorists stand for as much as any reasonably intelligent person
but have no desire to go beyond the solitude of visual observation and
photography.
Astronomy is a fountain,it is not a cistern which contains a celestial
sphere and this is where I take my stand.It is with the aid of
cataloguers that so much of my astronomical tradition lies buried
beneath so much empirical rubbish that it is barely recognisable.The
dignity of our ancestors was never lost in the transition from the
geocentric system to the Copernican /Keplerian heliocentric system but
what dignity is there in returning back to a quasi-geocentricity based
on the calendar system on Newton's word.
"PHÆNOMENON IV.
That the fixed stars being at rest, the periodic times of the five
primary planets, and (whether of the sun about the earth, or) of the
earth about the sun, are in the sesquiplicate proportion of their mean
distances from the sun.
This proportion, first observed by Kepler, is now received by all
astronomers; for the periodic times are the same, and the dimensions of
the orbits are the same, whether the sun revolves about the earth, or
the earth about the sun. And as to the measures of the periodic times,
all astronomers are agreed about them. But for the dimensions of the
orbits, Kepler and Bullialdus, above all others, have determined them
from observations with the greatest accuracy; and the mean distances
corresponding to the periodic times differ but insensibly from those
which they have assigned, and for the most part fall in between them;
as we may see from the following table."
http://members.tripod.com/~gravitee/phaenomena.htm
An astronomer weighs up those words in context of Kepler who worked off
mean motions through the center of the planet's orbit (Panis
Quadragesimalis) rather than mean Sun/Earth distances against a
sidereal framework and it is heartbreaking to see so much unethical
maneuvering by Newton to fit terrestial ballistics into planetary
motion.The result is that you have an isolated solar system within a
celestial sphere,great for cataloguers but a hopeless mess for an
astronomer who requires the framework for grafting in the new rotation
of the Earth and the solar system around the galactic axis.
The task is indeed enormous but the rewards outweigh anything that
contemporaries could offer,for a person would not be ashamed to stand
in the presence of the great astronomers and the ancient heritage which
stretches back to remote antiquity.That is all there is.
.
- References:
- You are cataloguers,not astronomers
- From: geraldkelleher
- Re: You are cataloguers,not astronomers
- From: Llanzlan Klazmon
- You are cataloguers,not astronomers
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