Re: Morning of Dec. 10th

It must be wonderful to come to sci.astro.amateur and speak of Mercury
being above Jupiter about 600 years after Copernicus created an
accurate version of the arrangement of planets in respect to each other
and to the central Sun.

The fly in the ointment with the Ptolemaic and earlier systems was
where to fit Mercury and Venus as the Sun was believed to exist below
Mars.The totally readable Copernicus explains in chapter 10 how he came
to place Mercury closest to the Sun next to the more distantVenus -

http://webexhibits.org/calendars/year-text-Copernicus.html

Being an unapolgetic sub-geocentrist is fine but I wish that at least a
few would go outside and try to match the reasoning of the great
astronomers,ancient and heliocentric, on planetary positions with
respect to the Earth and to the Sun.It is worth the effort,truly !.


W. H. Greer wrote:
I took a brief peek at Saturn and the moon, near each other high in
the morning sky.

The planetary conjunction of Jupiter, Mercury, and Mars was viewed
with 8x42 binoculars and an 80mm f/5 refractor (using 13x and 22x). It
was better with the binoculars. Mercury was just above Jupiter. Both
were very bright and obvious to the unaided eye. Above Mercury was
Beta Scorpii. Mars was a bit more distant from the above mentioned
trio -- off to one side (often behind the branches of a pine tree) and
significantly dimmer than the other two planets. This grouping was
observed off and on from about 13:30 UT until 14:15 UT. The
temperature was +17 degrees F (-8 degrees C).

The rising sun was glanced at with the 80mm f/5 refractor, equipped
with a full-aperture (Baader) solar filter. A large, very prominent
sunspot stood out like a sore thumb. It seemed to be sandwiched
between two smaller spots positioned near the edge of the main spot's
penumbra. These notes are based on a brief, visual observation at 22x
under poor seeing conditions. The Sun was very low in the sky, having
just risen high enough to view the full disk.
Bill

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: ? heliocentric vs geocentric models ?
    ... and on the other hand greater in Venus than in ... Mercury." ... the planets, as given by Kepler, also shows that the heliocentric ... the sun, ...
    (sci.astro.amateur)
  • Re: Mercury
    ... Of course, since Mercury has such little atmosphere to work with, as ... you have a largely carbon-dioxide atmosphere at Earth normal pressure, ... What has not been covered is the colonization of Mercury. ... Mercury orbits an average 57.9 million km from the Sun. ...
    (sci.space.policy)
  • Re: Perseids 2008 - another bust!
    ... and again why Venus has larger ones than Mercury; ... which lies in the motion of the Earth. ... But from the sun ... convene to ponder the matter of what planets are.Maybe you can remind ...
    (sci.astro.amateur)
  • Re: Refutation of Bertrand Russells Barber Paradox
    ... > holds, in positive free logics, only on the condition that ... In Frege´s system, if ~Ex(x is planet between the sun and Mercury), ...
    (sci.logic)
  • Mercury approaches overtaking point
    ... Looking in the direction of the Sun,the planet Mercury is now ... approaching the position where it overtakes the slower moving Earth ... You dare not look out in the direction of the Sun and appreciate what ... appreciation of what the great astronomers did based on the great ...
    (uk.sci.astronomy)
Loading