Change of rotation of the firmament

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rabinoz

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Re: Change of rotation of the firmament
« Reply #30 on: June 15, 2018, 04:18:07 PM »
I have a few questions for those who believe this is only possible, on a globe? How do the Stars move at the equator? Why is it we see stars make perfect circles around the Pole stars, yet were swirling to space orbiting around the sun at a tilt? It doesn't make any logical sense for them to make PERFECT circles.
For all practical purposes the stars "make PERFECT circles" and this has been observed for millennia.
The reason for that is that even the nearest visible star is so far away (Alpha Centauri at 4.37 light years or 41.3 trillion km) that we observe it from so close to the centre of its apparent motion that it seems to move in a perfect circle.

If you want to be pedantic, you could work out the variation in the radius of the of the circle that Alpha Centauri appears to move around, but I won't bother.
Even the change in angle to Alpha Centauri as the earth orbits the sun is so small that this stellar parallax, as it is called could not be measured by astronomers before the mid-1800s.
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The first successful measurements of stellar parallax were made by Friedrich Bessel in 1838 for the star 61 Cygni.
Were Alpha Centauri visible far enough north, it might have made a better choice, but it is about 60° south.