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Earth's axis has changed


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Love this bit......

For those who might believe the star alignment would have a drastic change, it would not be as significant as you might believe. When something is small and at a great distance, the effect of a 2000 mile slip is not as profound as you might think. The variation on the star positions are so miniscule that you would need professional observatory measuring equipment to detect the change.

So thats that all cleared up then! Kind of reminds me of the episode of Father Ted when Ted tries to explain to Dougal "This is close (Toy plastic cow)....that is far away (Cows in a field half a mile away)!

JV (not a scientist)

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Love this bit......

For those who might believe the star alignment would have a drastic change, it would not be as significant as you might believe. When something is small and at a great distance, the effect of a 2000 mile slip is not as profound as you might think. The variation on the star positions are so miniscule that you would need professional observatory measuring equipment to detect the change.

So thats that all cleared up then! Kind of reminds me of the episode of Father Ted when Ted tries to explain to Dougal "This is close (Toy plastic cow)....that is far away (Cows in a field half a mile away)!

JV (not a scientist)

One of my favourite moments of television :wink:

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The great thing about this is... If this kind of event really did happen, the first people to find out and shout about it would be us good ole' amateurs. I'd imagine at any one time there are more amateur astronomers pointing their EQ mounts near polaris than all the professional astronomer's put together! (Not to mention the fact that most of their instruments will be readily polar/drift aligned anyway). By the time any official astro organisation got through all the red tape to make an announcement... this forum and many others would be BULGING TO THE BRIM with "Polar alignment - What the hell?" threads :wink:

Vega

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Right on the money, Vega! "Polar alignment--what the hell?" would be it, exactly. :wink:

How many times in that article does the author, (whom, BTW is not identified?), say, "The pros are motivated by money, so they wouldn't say anything.", or other such nonsense. Contrary to popular belief, there's not a lot of money in science. Publishing and movie consulting, maybe, but science itself, nope. (Evidence? Have you seen how pro astronomers dress? :D)

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  • 2 weeks later...

The earths magnetic attraction must have dragged Polaris around with it. And to think of it, the rest of the stars too. No wonder we didn't notice anything wrong.

Also, which end moved 2000 miles south, the north end, or the south end. It makes a difference you know.

Ron. ;)

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A 2000 mile parallax shift up or down might not be noticed with a target light years away, but I'm damn sure we'd have noticed the earth tilting an extra 27 degrees during the night, and that sure makes a bit of a difference to what we see. Good thing I have an Alt-Az mount with sky-align, or I'd have to fiddle with my mount for hours trying to figure out what I did wrong.

You have to wonder how they came up with this nonsense, did soneone just wake up one day and think "wow, I thought I just felt the earth move!" There main reason for believing seems to be odd weather, and since we all know there's no other explanation for that doing the rounds right now it must come down to a tilt in the earths axis. Looks like all those scientists were wasting their time with that global warming gibberish, if only someone had thought to look up at some point...

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Forget what difference a 27deg shift would make to the night sky... just imagine what the UK weather would be like! ;) :sunny: :sunny: :sunny:

mmmm 24deg latitude sounds great! Won't be such a neck strain finding polaris either. Come to think of it, life as a UK astronomer would be heaven!

-Sagittarius/Scorpius and friends reach high up in the sky

-Centaurus in full view (Omega Centauri comes to mind :wink:)

-LMC, SMC visible ??

-We might loose Ursa Major in the Autumn but hey... Nevermind

-Day and night are of much more equal length through the year

Vega

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