The Sun is actually only 700 miles away

Quote from: Tom Bishop on September 05, 2013, 12:42:41 PM

Quote from: Alex Tomasovich on September 05, 2013, 12:35:33 PM

Quote from: Tom Bishop on September 05, 2013, 12:22:20 PM

Quote from: Cartesian on September 05, 2013, 12:06:40 PM

Many people are watching the sun as a hobby. This is just baseless. You gave up before you even try.

How many people are measuring the angle of the sun, a blinding hot ball with no defined center-point, at a precise angle, at the exact moment in time someone else is doing it on a distant point on earth? It's not an "easy" experiment, especially considering that the maps themselves may be inaccurate and RE-based.

Every navigator prior to 1950 (and quite a few after). Also, hobbyists.

Relatedly, I and Scintific Method and anyone else who cares to are a few weeks away from just such an experiment. And that experiment will give us the answer in terms of the distance from the north pole to the equator which can be measured at a later date.

Every navigator prior to 1950 has performed accurate triangulation experiments on the sun with another distant partner simultaneously? Please post this data.

Who said about triangulation experiment?

I did.

If your instruments can discern one second of arc you can perform the triangulation experiment from 300m apart, if one degree is equal to 111kms. Why would you say that a disc has no defined center point?  I would say it is trivially easy to spot the center of the sun. It's like playing billiards. This experiment is quite simple actually, provided you have the right tools.

If your instruments can discern one second of arc you can perform the triangulation experiment from 300m apart, if one degree is equal to 111kms. Why would you say that a disc has no defined center point?  I would say it is trivially easy to spot the center of the sun. It's like playing billiards. This experiment is quite simple actually, provided you have the right tools.

The experiment requires the observation to be done twice at two different points at the same moment in time. To say that every navigator prior to 1950 has done this is pure fiction.

Sure. That is 63 years ago and a lot has changed.  This experiment is no longer complex and I look forward to Alex and Scintific's results.

Quote from: Cartesian on September 05, 2013, 02:48:19 PM

Quote from: Tom Bishop on September 05, 2013, 12:42:41 PM

Quote from: Alex Tomasovich on September 05, 2013, 12:35:33 PM

Quote from: Tom Bishop on September 05, 2013, 12:22:20 PM

Quote from: Cartesian on September 05, 2013, 12:06:40 PM

Many people are watching the sun as a hobby. This is just baseless. You gave up before you even try.

How many people are measuring the angle of the sun, a blinding hot ball with no defined center-point, at a precise angle, at the exact moment in time someone else is doing it on a distant point on earth? It's not an "easy" experiment, especially considering that the maps themselves may be inaccurate and RE-based.

Every navigator prior to 1950 (and quite a few after). Also, hobbyists.

Relatedly, I and Scintific Method and anyone else who cares to are a few weeks away from just such an experiment. And that experiment will give us the answer in terms of the distance from the north pole to the equator which can be measured at a later date.

Every navigator prior to 1950 has performed accurate triangulation experiments on the sun with another distant partner simultaneously? Please post this data.

Who said about triangulation experiment?

I did.

Tom: How many people are measuring the angle of the sun?
Alex: Every navigator prior to 1950 (and quite a few after) [using sextant]
Tom: Every navigator prior to 1950 has performed accurate triangulation experiments on the sun with another distant partner simultaneously?

Tom, am I missing something here? Or are you manipulating the question?

Cartesian-you are leaving out the last phrase of Tom's question,"at the exact moment in time someone else is doing it on a distant point on earth?"  It is a crucial phrase that Alex ignores.

Cartesian-you are leaving out the last phrase of Tom's question,"at the exact moment in time someone else is doing it on a distant point on earth?"  It is a crucial phrase that Alex ignores.

That's the point I was trying to make, but not to Alex, it was for Tom.

This is how I understand the conversation between Tom and Alex. Tom's question was how many people were measuring the angle of the sun. There are two ways of understanding this question.

First. If you consider that question on its own (not in the context of the sun distance) as I thought the question was, then the answer would be a lot (similar to Alex's answer). Sailors (a lot less when GPS became available) measure the angle of the sun using sextant to navigate. They do exactly what Tom asked; measure the angle between the sun and the horizon (to determine their latitude). But then, in the next question, Tom asked Alex to prove that all those people were performing accurate triangulation experiments on the sun with another distant partner simultaneously. This is when the discussion fell apart. Those sailors do (or did) measure the angle of the sun to calculate their position but not to do triangulation experiment with another partner simultaneously.

Second. If you consider that question in the context of the sun distance then the answer would be why would ordinary people measure the sun distance. They leave that job to scientists. Some scientists may do or repeat the experiment to measure the sun distance but not using the method described by Tom (triangulation experiment with another partner simultaneously).

So in both cases, Tom question didn't make sense. At least to me. That's why I asked him whether he manipulated the question probably with an intention to steer this discussion to an area where he is more comfortable with.

No Tom asked how many sailors measured the sun with a sextant under specific conditions. Alex chose to ignore the last condition, which I quoted in my last post and so Tom's challenge is completely valid.

After rereading it again and again, now I see what you mean. I don't know why but I overlooked that part. I stopped reading after blinding hot ball. My mistake. Maybe it's tl;dr . So the answer in my opinion would then be no one except Rowbotham and Voliva (whose I doubt the method) and these two so called experiments are more than 100 years old.

As far as I know the earliest scientifically valid method to measure the distance to the sun was done by Cassini in 1670s. He measured the nearest distance from Earth to Mars using parallax and then deduced the distance Earth-Sun using Kepler's laws (Mars-Sun = 1.52 x Earth-Sun). So yes, in 17th century scientists used triangulation method but they were not stupid enough to do it directly to the sun.

After rereading it again and again, now I see what you mean. I don't know why but I overlooked that part. I stopped reading after blinding hot ball. My mistake. Maybe it's tl;dr . So the answer in my opinion would then be no one except Rowbotham and Voliva (whose I doubt the method) and these two so called experiments are more than 100 years old.

As far as I know the earliest scientifically valid method to measure the distance to the sun was done by Cassini in 1670s. He measured the nearest distance from Earth to Mars using parallax and then deduced the distance Earth-Sun using Kepler's laws (Mars-Sun = 1.52 x Earth-Sun). So yes, in 17th century scientists used triangulation method but they were not stupid enough to do it directly to the sun.

I made the same mistake, no worries.  Tom will most definitely come back with the defense that Cassini's method assumes a heliocentric model and a RE, so if you know how Cassini determined the proper parallax distance, that would be awesome.

Actually I am still waiting for Tom to come back with some bodies of evidence in relation to the altitude of the sun. I sincerely hope it doesn't take him forever.

Regarding your question about Cassini method, I am not sure whether now or this thread is the right moment/place to discuss it without derailing the thread. The point of this thread actually is not go into too much detail on how scientists determine the distance to the sun in the RE model but to focus more on how poor FE model is to measure the distance to the sun. I can PM you some links that I find interesting.