Paul, I'm glad you liked the diagram. Keep looking for the flaw - If A-centrism is true, then there must be one. As for your 3 loud points. "1. the camera must be aligned on the axis of the pole you are photographing; 2. the exposure must be appropriate to the length of time required for the phenomenon to occur; and 3. the base line of the observer has no repeat NO effect on the resulting image." 1) I see no reason why the camera must be aligned to the axis. A camera not aligned with the nightly axis will still record the star trails. The point is, if I took a camera and aimed it at a spot halfway between the two axis (annual & nightly) and recorded star trails every night for a period of time; according to your statement I would have recorded nothing, but in reality I would have recorded the nightly trail but no annual trail, there is no reason not to record both if in fact there is a second axis of rotation. Thats what my far right diagram is about, a point on the nightly circle must travel the annual circle. 2) Yes, I agree exposure time is important, but this is a practical detail about recording data and has nothing I can see with deciding what that data tells us. 3) I agree with this, which is why I used a base line of zero for my drawing. JA... Paul Deema <paul_deema@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: J A Stunning drawing! I've spent some time looking at it and visualising it and I was just about to suggest that I think it is correct but then I thought a bit more. It sent me back to an earlier post of yours where the germ of this idea was no doubt forming in your head. I stated in reply that you had confused parallax with axes of rotation. I'm not sure now that that was correct either, since the axis in question was not defined. It will help my (northern hemisphere) explanation here if we use two cameras side by side -- one for the nightly and the other for the annual exposures. The nightly camera must be aligned due north thus its Z axis will be aligned with the geo polar axis and Polaris will be about 1/2 degree off centre, thus it will record a circle with a solid angle of 1 degree. The annual camera must be mounted as described in my post Re: Is Geocentrism supported by facts? (Supplementary) and its attachment EclipticPoles.jpg of Mon 29/10/07 11:44 AM, so as to maintain the camera Z axis aligned with the ecliptic polar axis. On the first night, at dusk, we open the nightly camera shutter. At midnight, we take a short exposure on the annual camera and close the daily camera. On the second to the 13th inclusive, we take a short exposure at midnight on the annual camera. On the 14th, we begin again the cycle just described. After 48 weeks we will have 24 nightly exposures and 336 exposures on the annual camera. When we look at the results however, we will find that while the annual exposure has an approximately 92% circle of dots, the nightly camera will have just two simple circles -- not the pretty accumulation of circles within circles arranged in a circle -- the smaller one with one degree diameter (Polaris), the other (Star A) rather larger. (There is a fiction here -- I'm only considering one or two stars in each case for simplicity). Why so? Because the annual camera has remained aligned with the ecliptic pole and has been advancing radially about one degree per day. It has recorded what we expected -- the target star slowly advancing dot by dot around the pole. The nightly camera has remained aligned on the geo pole and -- while we may not have expected it -- it has recorded what it saw namely, Polaris at half a degree separation form the north celestial pole and Star A separated by rather more degrees, each describing a circle made up of (approximately) a 90 degree segment repeated 24 times. Each segment is recorded about 14 * 360 / 365.25 = 13.8 degrees advanced on the previous segment, thus over time, these will be superimposed, one 13.8 degree advanced segment laid upon another to build up the circle. In case someone suggests aligning the nightly camera on the ecliptic polar axis -- no that won't work either. What you would get if you did that, is simply segments of larger circles, because the Earth is still rotating on its geo polar axis and Polaris may well be out of the frame! A note here -- we lightly but imprecisely talk about circles. In fact each star will describe an arc equal to 360 * ( exposure time / 24 hours ), probably about 90 to 120 degrees. The illusion of circles is 'filled out' by stars on the other side of the axis also rotating for the same period of time and the gaps filled in by others part way round the circle hence such pictures are always 'ragged'. The point is -- and I'll say it loudly -- 1. the camera must be aligned on the axis of the pole you are photographing; 2. the exposure must be appropriate to the length of time required for the phenomenon to occur; and 3. the base line of the observer has no repeat NO effect on the resulting image. Sorry to have to shout, but I've been saying this over and over for 18 months and so far no one seems to have really grabbed hold of it. I'm sure that the 24 half monthly exposure shot could be made but it would have to be contrived by 'mis-aligning' the camera so that the north celestial pole was successively positioned in your view finder at each of those 24 positions. Of course you need not wait two weeks between exposures -- you could do it on successive nights but then there would be no point. In addition, if you wished to have radial symmetry in the photo, you would have to rotate the camera by the appropriate amount before each exposure, but as the image will be a simple circle or two, no one would notice. Paul D ----- Original Message ---- From: Paul Deema <paul_deema@xxxxxxxxxxx> To: Geocentrism@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Wednesday, 31 October, 2007 2:57:30 PM Subject: [geocentrism] Re: Is geocentrism supported by facts? (Supplementary) JA Yes old man, you are so right! You will be pleased to know (I just know you'll be pleased to know!) that I have put in some effort -- two or three nights at least -- but as you can see we are caught up in a maelstrom at the moment and -- to mix a metaphor -- if I let go of the tail now I will be left far behind. It is proving difficult for me to get it all together (the evolution paradigm thing) I just don't seem to be able to take reasonably complex philosophical concepts and reduce them to a single term for evaluation purposes any more but I have not forgotten and will get back to it with any luck at all. I've extracted this from your post -- It has been stated that this annual star trail does not exist. Has anyone recorded an annual star trail??? I want to see the picture! If we superimposed 2 nightly star trail photos from 6 months apart (erase all circles except polaris for simplicity) we should see the center of the two nightly circles of polaris ~23 degrees apart, if they are not, then we have our proof positive of the falsity of A-centrism. No -- I'm afraid that won't work. You are confusing parallax with the effects of differing axes of rotation. Don't feel too bad though, there has been confusion enough for all to get a share. I'm hoping my last two posts may help clear things up. Paul D --------------------------------- National Bingo Night. Play along for the chance to win $10,000 every week. Download your gamecard now at Yahoo!7 TV. --------------------------------- National Bingo Night. Play along for the chance to win $10,000 every week. Download your gamecard now at Yahoo!7 TV. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com