About the distance to the stars

Those who have read Chapter 23 of my book will know that the TYCHOS model posits that the stars are far closer (about 42633 X) than currently believed. In this post, I will demonstrate the utter absurdity of the enormous star distances estimated by the Copernican advocates.


THE ABSURD COPERNICAN STELLAR SIZE & DISTANCE ESTIMATES

Our nearmost star Proxima Centauri is reckoned to be about 1/7th the size of our Sun. It is considered to be a “red dwarf star” (red dwarfs are the most common stars in our universe and are notoriously quite dim - oftentimes so dim as to be invisible in our best telescopes).

Proxima’s officially-estimated “true” angular diameter is 0.001” arc-seconds - although it appears to be MUCH larger in our telescopes (for comparison, the Sun’s observed angular diameter is 1920" arc-seconds).

Proxima’s distance from our Solar System is officially-reckoned (by modern astronomers) to be about 4.25 light years - or 268775 AU (i.e. 268775 X further away than our Sun). This, because (as their reasoning goes): 1920” / 268775 ≈ 0.007” / 7 ≈ 0.001”

Wow… this is 1,920,000 X smaller than the observed angular diameter of our Sun (1920”) – or, to wit, almost 2 MILLION TIMES smaller than the angular diameter subtended by the Sun in our skies! Now, as we go along, please keep in mind that we are talking about the VERY NEARMOST STAR to our Solar System, ok?

To put this into perspective, my below graphic shows how an object 100 X smaller than the Sun would look like - in our skies. Now, imagine if that little dot wasn’t only 100 X smaller (as in the below image) – but as much as 2 MILLION times smaller… Give it a good thought - and let it sink in for a moment…

So the question becomes: if that little dot were 2 MILLION times smaller than the Sun (which only subtends a mere 0.5° in our skies), HOW - pray tell - would it possibly be visible from the Earth at all ? Can your mind even remotely conceptualize such a possibility? Oh wait, could it be because Proxima is an exceptionally bright / luminous star? Well, no - not according to officialdom… Here’s what we may read on the Wikipedia:

“(Proxima’s) total luminosity over all wavelengths is 0.17% that of the Sun, although when observed in the wavelengths of visible light the eye is most sensitive to, it is only 0.0056% as luminous as the Sun.” Proxima Centauri - Wikipedia

In other words, we are asked to believe that Proxima, our very nearmost star…

  • Is 7 X smaller than our Sun
  • Is located 268775 X further away than our Sun
  • Is FAR, FAR dimmer (less luminous) than our Sun
  • Has a “true” angular diameter almost 2 MILLION X smaller than our Sun

Yet, in spite of all this - Proxima is still readily visible (telescopically) from Earth !

Well, the Copernicans have come up with all sorts of excuses for this (e.g. ‘lens diffraction’ / Airy Disk / etc.) which I will cover in my next post here - but this is all for now, folks! :slight_smile:

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I’m sorry I jumped ahead in ch 23, please let me know if I have this right or not:

"This will be our reduction factor for all the stellar distances listed in official star catalogues.**

This also means that, in the TYCHOS, the distance unit known as “1 Light Year” corresponds to less than 1.5 AU :

9 460 730 472 580.8 km (i.e. one “light year”) ÷ 42633 ≈ 1.4834 AU"

So the distance would be 2,219,166.4 km? (of 1.4834 AU)

Dear schoepffer,

Firstly, welcome to the forum.

Yes, precisely: what is currently called “one light year” would - under the TYCHOS paradigm - correspond to a distance of about 2,219,166.4 km.

ERRATA CORRIGE (edited on June 4, 2023) :
Oh wait - no ! The correct distance would be 221 916 640 km !

Thank you Simon.

Does this indicate that the stated velocity of c is erroneous or is there a different take away here?

Good question, dear schoepffer. However, I really do not pretend (at this time) to have an answer to that question. Nevertheless, in Chapter 24 of my book, you may read about the diurnal variation of “c” - as detected by several interferometer experiments - by Dayton Miller et al. As it ‘happens’, this diurnal variation of “c” appears to be congruent with my proposed translational speed of Earth.

Hi Simon.

Could I ask two questions about this topic?

  1. Have you done the maths on whether the stars would be visible at the distances claimed by astronomers? For example the luminosity of the sun, L, is measured at 3.83 x 10^26 W. The luminosity you would measure in W/m^2 at a given distance is L/4Pid^2. If the sun was as far away Alpha Centauri is claimed to be we would measure a value of about 2 x 10^-8 W/m^2.

Biologists have measured the sensitivity of the dark adapted human eye down to around 10^-10 W/m^2. So more than enough to see a star several light years away. So if we were to assume other stars were comparable to the sun they should be visible at stellar distances.

  1. Does your 43000x scaling factor apply to all distant objects? I ask because even with a reduction of 43000x the Andromeda galaxy would be 60 light years away. So large stellar distances would still be a thing.

Hello Scsa - and welcome to the forum.

The question of the luminosities of the various stars in our skies is among the most questionable areas of astronomy – as these claimed luminosities are so wildly diverse and conflicting as to defy and discourage any sort of rational consideration. Let me try and back up and illustrate this claim of mine with a few examples.

For instance, the luminosity of Alpha Centauri – reckoned to be 1.2X the size of our Sun - is allegedly about 1.5 L☉ (i.e. 1.5 X that of the Sun), whereas Proxima Centauri’s luminosity is estimated to be about 0.0015 L☉. (Proxima, our very nearmost star – reckoned to be about 1/7h the size of the Sun - is invisible with the naked eye and is believed to be a dim red dwarf). So far so good: these claimed estimates may perhaps be reasonably plausible, although this means that Proxima would be a whopping 1000 X dimmer than Alpha Centauri (the two of them being located at a similar distance from us (allegedly about 4.25 “light years” – meaning that they would be roughly 268000 times further away than our Sun…).

Sirius, the very brightest star in our skies, is believed to be 1.7X larger than the Sun – and to be located at a distance of 8.7 “light years” (or about 550,000 times [i.e. more than HALF A MILLION!] further away than our Sun). Its alleged luminosity is 25.4 L☉. Now, why Sirius’ luminosity would be so much stronger than that of Alpha Centauri is anyone’s guess. After all, they are both reckoned to be only slightly larger than the Sun.

The below image (a real photograph I’ve used to compare the observed sizes of Sirius and Jupiter) is taken from Chapter 23 of my book:


As you can see, Sirius certainly doesn’t appear to be anywhere near as much as HALF A MILLION times more distant than the Sun (which of course subtends only 0.5° in our skies - much like the Moon in the above photograph). Now, Copernican astronomers will tell you that “stars appear larger than they actually are, due to atmospheric diffraction”. You may then rightly wonder : WHY would this “atmospheric diffraction” only affect the stars - and not our planets (such as Jupiter)?

But the luminosity question becomes well & truly ridiculous as we read about much more distant stars such as, for instance, Deneb. Firstly, no one seems to know precisely how distant Deneb is from our solar system: depending on which (modern) official sources you may choose to trust, Deneb would be either 1550, 2615 or 3230 “light years” away… More absurdly still, the claimed luminosities of Deneb (that you may find in the literature) range between 54000 L☉ - and up to “196000” L☉… That’s right, we are asked to believe that the light (or ‘wattage’) emitted by star Deneb is, for some unfathomable reason, 196000 times stronger than our Sun! Quite frankly, it seems to me that such wild claims are no more than ad hoc contrivances aimed at ‘justifying’ the fact that we can see (with our naked eyes) stars such as Deneb – believed to be located HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of times further away than the Sun (e.g. 3230 “light years” = more than 204 MILLION AU !!!).

You may therefore appreciate why I have chosen to largely ignore the ‘luminosity’ issue in my book – and why I decided to focus instead on the angular diameter question. Mind you, the latter also presents profoundly questionable aspects; for instance, the “true” angular diameter of Alpha Centauri is officially claimed to be 0.007” (or 8570 times less than 60” arcseconds, i.e. the minimal resolution of the human eye). Nevertheless, the claimed angular diameters of our stars have the advantage of being more tractable, since they are empirically-estimated measurements collected by astronomers in their telescopes; unfortunately, astronomers systematically apply a huge reduction factor to the actual star-sizes observed in their telescopes – due to the infamous “Airy Disk” diffraction theory. But more about that later…

So does my 42633 reduction / scaling factor apply to ALL distant objects? Well, I am satisfied (for now) that it applies fairly well to our ‘cosmic neighborhood’ - but of course, further study is needed to determine whether this scaling factor might perhaps increase (at some “exponential” rate?) over larger, ‘galactic’ distances. As for the Andromeda “galaxy”, you may wish to read about its apparent binary structure in Chapter 26 of my book,

Thank you for your detailed response. I think you have gone beyond the question asked, so there is a bit to unpack here.

So in principle, can we agree that the sun at least should be visible from a distance of several light years? While measuring distant stars can be problematic, the size and brightness of the sun is much less controversial.

Your comparisons of Proxima and Alpha Centauri, would these relative values not still hold in the Tychos model? By moving the stars closer you have reduced the luminosity and/or size of the stars. But you’ve done this uniformly. So Sirius would still need to be about 16x the luminosity of Alpha Centauri and would still be twice as far away.

Of course the astrophysics answer would be that these objects are different stellar classes with different mass and different energy outputs. Stellar evolution and nuclear fusion are still being understood, but are based on nuclear physics experiments performed on Earth. Leading to theories on how different stars are able to put out different amounts of energy. We can also look at increasing mass leading to increasing gravity leading to increasing density leading to packing more stuff into an object the same size. Cheerfully, you’ve still got all this to come. If your Tychos model turns out to be true then most of the stuff we know about gravity, stellar evolution etc. will probably need to be thrown out. Then future scientists will have to wrestle with the complexities of the inner workings of stars all over again!

Copernican astronomers would probably tell you that stars appear larger due to diffraction effects in the optical instrument. I assume you are refereeing to the Airy disk phenomenon? If so this is an effect of the lens or mirror being used and isn’t solely an issue in astronomy. There is a maximum angular size that a source can be focused to. This is related to the diameter of the lens/mirror. The human eye for example can’t resolve objects to smaller than 20 arcsec in size. So the eye would see stars as that angular size. Jupiter is 30 – 50 arcsec, depending on when you are viewing it. So the eye would see Jupiter as about twice the size of a star. However, since the sizes are very small it is hard to tell the difference. Use even a modest telescope and the diameter of the aperture will reduce the size of the Airy disk. Why doesn’t Jupiter suffer from the Airy disk problem? Because it is already larger than even the limit of diffraction of the human eye, never mind most telescopes. You may then get a haze around the object as it illuminates the atmosphere to blur the edges.

Is that a digital photograph by the way? Have you considered the limitations of pixel size on how small the object would appear?

You’ve chosen an interesting star to discuss in Deneb. Direct parallax measurements of distance are unreliable beyond about 300 light years. This is due to the small angle being measured. This would still be an issue for the Tychos as the angle you are trying to measure for Deneb would be the same and still be small, so your uncertainties would be large. Your recalculated distance for Deneb based on your smaller motion of Earth would still have the same relative uncertainty in the distance. Other more indirect distance measurements are inferred from still developing theories on variable stars and the processes inside stars. Made even more complicated because Deneb is seen to vary in brightness with time. Also the reason the light from Deneb is 196000 times that of the sun has been fathomed extensively by astrophysicists. You can deconstruct their work, but you can’t claim it is unfathomable. Though again you’ve got all this to come while physics tries to relearn astrophysics based on the Tychos model. Perhaps Mount Holyoke College can rewrite their course to:

“Simon Shack’s laws are wonderful as a description of the motions of the planets. However, they provide no explanation of why the planets move in this way.”

Dear Scsa, thanks for your thoughtful replies. If you don’t mind, I will respond to them in steps. I hope that’s ok with you - and that you will in turn respond to each one of my questions individually.

You wrote (regarding that sky picture by Tom Wildoner):

“Is that a digital photograph by the way? Have you considered the limitations of pixel size on how small the object would appear?”

You may read about the camera specs on Tom Wildoner’s page, where he also duly provides the date of his picture: October 8, 2015: Morning Planets October 8, 2015 | This morning’s planetary s… | Flickr

In any event, his picture is downloadable in fairly high resolution (2746px X 1834px). In my image editing software, I find that the white/illuminated pixels of Jupiter and Sirius are about 6X9 and 8X7 respectively. We may thus say that their total pixel areas are pretty much identical (Jupiter: a 54 pixel area - versus Sirius: a 56 pixel area):

On October 8, 2015, Jupiter was about 6.2AU away from us. Jupiter is only about 17 times smaller than Sirius which is, on the other hand, believed to be located a whopping 87700 times(!) further away than Jupiter.

So here is my question with regards to the empirically-observed sizes of Jupiter and Sirius:

Do you think that the fact that the sizes of Jupiter and Sirius are actually observed to be near-identical is due to:

  • Atmospheric diffraction?
  • The so-called Airy disk phenomenon?
  • The stronger, intrinsic luminosity of Sirius?
  • The limitations of pixel size in digital photographs?
  • If none of the above, please submit your best / most plausible explanation.

Do you think that the fact that the sizes of Jupiter and Sirius are actually observed to be near-identical is due to:

  • Atmospheric diffraction?
  • The so-called Airy disk phenomenon?
  • The stronger, intrinsic luminosity of Sirius?
  • The limitations of pixel size in digital photographs?
  • If none of the above, please submit your best / most plausible explanation.

In this example I’m going with B, Airy disk, with a bit of A and a dash of 15 seconds of exposure meaning the light is not necessarily going to illuminate the same pixels for the whole 15 seconds.

According to the Flickr page you linked the photographer used a focal length of 17mm and an f-stop of f/4. By my calculations this means the lens was using an aperture of about 4mm (which is smaller than the human pupil). So a max resolution of 30 arcsecs. If Jupiter was at 6.2 AU for the picture then that’s Jupiter’s largest distance from Earth, so would be about 30 arcsec. Makes sense that the camera would see them as the same size.

Dear Scsa, thanks for your reply. So, in your opinion, it makes sense that a camera would see Jupiter and Sirius as the same size - in spite of Sirius being (allegedly) more than 87700 times more distant than Jupiter.

If this makes sense to you, fine - but it certainly makes no sense to me - so I’m afraid I’ll just have to get on responding to the other points you brought up in your 2nd post on this forum. You wrote:

“Stellar evolution and nuclear fusion are still being understood, but are based on nuclear physics experiments performed on Earth.”

“Are still being understood”? Sorry, but I simply can’t understand what you mean by that. You then wrote:

“If your Tychos model turns out to be true then most of the stuff we know about gravity, stellar evolution etc. will probably need to be thrown out.”

Well, it’s not like there is any general consensus about those subject matters. In fact, there are countless theories circulating regarding gravity and stellar evolution, To be sure, no earnest astronomers / cosmologists or astrophysicists would claim that these are settled matters. These areas of human knowledge are still very much a work in progress, and anyone telling you otherwise is a liar or a fool.

You then wrote that “the reason the light from Deneb is 196000 times that of the sun has been fathomed extensively by astrophysicists.” Well, try telling that to Fred Espenak, perhaps America’s foremost living astrophysicist. On his website, we can read that “(Deneb) has a luminosity 54,000 times the Sun” (i.e. only 28% of 196000!). Espenak also estimates Deneb to be 110X the size of the Sun - whereas the Wikipedia has Deneb at 203X the size of the Sun. The Wikipedia also mentions that Deneb has a ‘pulsating period of about 800 days’ - and that Deneb “has been reported as a possible single line spectroscopic binary with a period of about 850 days”. The TYCHOS, of course, proposes that ALL stars are binaries (i.e. revolve in intersecting orbits with a binary companion around their common barycenter). Hence, that ‘800-day pulsating period’ of Deneb may quite plausibly be caused by its companion passing in front of it, every 800 days or so…

As for your last, rather sarcastic-sounding comment…

"Simon Shack’s laws are wonderful as a description of the motions of the planets. However, they provide no explanation of why the planets move in this way.”

… oh well, I may not provide an explanation as to just WHY the planets move in this way, but the Tychosium 3D simulator shows precisely HOW the planets move. As it is, it does so in full accordance with all astronomical observations / ephemerides gathered throughout the centuries and - unlike any heliocentric simulator - correctly simulates the recorded conjunctions between our planets and the stars,

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Dear Scsa, thanks for your reply. So, in your opinion, it makes sense that a camera would see Jupiter and Sirius as the same size - in spite of Sirius being (allegedly) more than 87700 times more distant than Jupiter.
If this makes sense to you, fine - but it certainly makes no sense to me - so I’m afraid I’ll just have to get on responding to the other points you brought up in your 2nd post on this forum.

It’s not the camera, it’s the lens. A lens simply can’t focus a light source to smaller than a given angular size, based on the diameter of the lens. So the lens used in this image is physically not capable of showing Sirius any smaller. This isn’t astrophysics, it’s optics and would also apply if you tried to point a camera lens or telescope at a small distant light source on Earth. But if you want to move on that’s fine.

These areas of human knowledge are still very much a work in progress, and anyone telling you otherwise is a liar or a fool.

That was my point. Astrophysicists and cosmologists are still working on understanding how the universe works. All based on difficult to make measurements of distant objects. That there are competing ideas, contradictions and the occasional mistake is not unexpected, it’s just how science works. You yourself are one of these competing ideas. If you are correct about the structure of the solar system then future astrophysicists will have to figure out stellar evolution, distance modulus, variable stars etc. and I very much doubt they’ll reach a general consensus any time soon. But you need to show why they are wrong by deconstructing the physics.

On his website, we can read that *“(Deneb) has a luminosity 54,000 times the Sun"…

Looking at his website it is a very cut down description of Deneb. It doesn’t appear to be designed as a detailed overview of Deneb, more “here’s a cool picture and here is some information”. He doesn’t even mentioned the variability there.

The Wikipedia also mentions that Deneb has a ‘pulsating period of about 800 days’ - and that Deneb “has been reported as a possible single line spectroscopic binary with a period of about 850 days

You need to dig a little deeper and be careful of using Wikipedia as a primary source. The Wiki page references this paper Richardson et al who reference a paper by Lucy (1976), while saying “Lucy (1976) found evidence that Deneb was a long period single–lined spectroscopic binary star, but our data set shows no evidence for radial velocity variations caused by a binary companion”. So Deneb’s binary status is questionable at best.

From looking at light curves of Deneb’s variability they don’t really look how you would expect an eclipsing binary light curve to look anyway.

As for your last, rather sarcastic-sounding comment…

Sorry, that was a bit snarky. I just found it interesting that you’d used that quote in a negative way about the work of Kepler, when your work is in the exact same place. You’ve fit a model to the data but have yet to work out the underlying physics.

Dear Scsa,

Since you cautioned me not to use Wikipedia as a primary source, rest assured that it is actually at the very bottom of my ‘truthworthiness scale’. However, it can sometimes be a handy tool to get a general overview of the published literature on any given subject - what with the many external links it provides. During my decade-long (and almost 24/7) TYCHOS research, I have been reading untold volumes of past and present astronomy literature in the five languages that I’ve been fortunate enough to learn in young age.

In the case of Deneb, the Wikipedia mentions that “its luminosity is somewhere between 55,000 and 196,000 times that of the Sun”. So your comment about that Fred Espenak’s webpage I linked to (where he states the 54,000 L☉ value) is rather gratuitous, since that value can be found in numerous other astronomy texts. Also, and again, the distance estimates to Deneb we may find range between 3230 LY and all the way down to 1411.96 light LY. For instance, here’s an extract from a universeguide.com ‘Deneb fact page’ :

“Deneb is a Binary or Multiple star system. Using the most recent figures given by the 2007 Hipparcos data, Deneb distance from Earth is 1411.96 light years.”

Earlier on, dear Scsa, you wrote (quite rightly) that “astrophysicists and cosmologists are still working on understanding how the universe works.” On the other hand, you seem to trust their claims when you state that “the reason the light from Deneb is 196000 times that of the sun has been fathomed extensively by astrophysicists.” Well, it is now my turn to ask you to “dig a little deeper” - and to take such official claims & estimates with a grain (or a truckload) of salt; for what credibility would their luminosity estimates retain - if they can’t even agree (to any decent degree of accuracy) upon how distant Deneb is?

To return to Wikipedia’s DENEB entry, here’s what we may read:

“The cause of the pulsations of Alpha Cygni variable stars are not fully understood, but their irregular nature seems to be due to beating of multiple pulsation periods. Analysis of radial velocities determined 16 different harmonic pulsation modes with periods ranging between 6.9 and 100.8 days. A longer period of about 800 days probably also exists [30].
(my bolds)

Well, that last sentence followed by a link reference [30] leads to a paper by Yüce, Kutluay Adelman, Saul J which is only concerned with the observed ‘periodic pulsations’ of Deneb - and does NOT speculate whether Deneb is a binary star or not. Yet, their study found some sort of 800-day ‘pulsation periodicity’ for Deneb.

Now, Leon B. Lucy’s 1976 study which concluded (yet was promptly ‘debunked’) that Deneb is a binary star found two possible orbital periods consistent with a spectroscopic binary: one of 846.8 days and another of 766.4 days, As we average these two values, we get (846.8+766.4 = 1613.2 / 2 = 806.6) 806.6 days.

Well, it would seem to be an extraordinary coincidence that the two above-mentioned (and wholly separate / unrelated) studies both detected a ca. 800-day periodicity of Deneb, don’t you think?

You see, dear Scsa, in the course of my many years of deep diggings into astronomy literature, I have come across a number of debates regarding the subject of binary stars. To make a long story short, my overwhelming impression (matured over the years) is that ‘mainstream heliocentric astronomers’ are horrified at the ‘abhorrent’ notion that ALL the stars (without exception) in our skies may be binary, for this would obviously spell the end of heliocentrism - which of course stipulates that our Sun is a ‘single and orbitless’ star located at the centre of our system .

As you may read in this section of my book, titled “THE ASSAULT ON THE NOTION THAT ALL STARS ARE BINARIES”, it was a shady yet most influential chap named Harlow Shapley who decided that the idea that Cepheid variables might be binaries had to be definitively abandoned…

Another such instance of ‘resistance against the notion that all stars are binaries’ is described at the end of Chapter 2 of my book. The epic, long-lasting feud between two eminent astronomers (and binary-star experts) Heintz and Van de Kamp eventually ended with the victory of the latter. Van de Kamp had argued for years that the Barnard’s star had a companion, but Heintz would have none of it. In more recent years, both ESA (in 2007) and NASA (in 2010) decided to discontinue their efforts to search for Barnard’s companion after having failed to detect it and, apparently, due to “lack of funding”… Well - lo and behold - it was eventually ascertained (as recently as 2018) that the Barnard’s star indeed has a companion, now named “Barnard b”.

Finally, let me comment this line of yours, dear Scsa:

“You’ve fit a model to the data but have yet to work out the underlying physics.”

Yes, I have demonstrated that the TYCHOS model is geometrically consistent with the observational data gathered by our world’s best astronomers over the centuries. Can Kepler claim to have done so? Nope. And this should become evident to anyone who cares to read all the 32 chapters of my TYCHOS book.

There’s an old saying that goes: “You don’t put the cart before the horse”.

Geometry_Physics_01

In our case, the ‘cart’ would be the PHYSICS ruling our universe - and the ‘horse’ would be the GEOMETRY of our solar system. Well, the TYCHOS is all about the only possible geometric configuration of our solar system. In other words, the TYCHOS is the living, natural horse - and the cart (or chariot) is an appendage that needs to be subsequently figured out and constructed piecemeal by human intelligence and ingenuity - based upon the tractional capabilities of the horse!

You just can’t put the cart before the horse. :slight_smile:

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I guess I’m just not sure what you wanted me to take away from Fred’s website then, when he’s just paraphrasing Wikipedia anyway. I’m also not sure what the problem with Deneb is.

Parallax measurements are unreliable at large distances because the angles are small. Other indirect ways of measuring the distance are based on theoretical models of stellar physics that aren’t perfectly understood. Luminosity has to be inferred from assumptions about the type of star or calculated from a confidently known direct distance measurement. Deneb’s variability makes things more complex. Astrophysicists are open and honest about this and it’s a good example of how complicated astrophysics is.

Would you mind explaining how Tychos solves the Deneb question? If your direct parallax distance measurement is using the same angle with the same uncertainty, you will have the same proportional uncertainty in distance. Are the indirect distance measurements easier and more reliable under the Tychos paradigm?

I’ve looked at the papers by Lucy, Richardson and Yuce. Lucy identifies an 800ish day period, suggests a binary companion as a likely cause but seems more concerned with actually identifying periods. Richardson claims to find no evidence of a binary companion in their dataset. Yuce reiterates what Lucy and Richardson said in their respective papers, but only finds an 800 day period during part of their dataset. In any case, without more targeted measurements and analysis we don’t know if this 800 day period is due to a binary companion.

I’m happy to stipulate the majority of stars may be binary. Though even 15% of the stars in the universe is a lot and a 1 in 7 chance of being solitary is not that unlikely, after all only 13% of the planets in our solar system are inhabited.

I’m keen to know more about the geometric argument. I’ve ready your chapter on the geometric impossibility of the Copernican model. While you show that the Tychos matches observations I didn’t see an explanation of how the Copernican model was impossible. But that might be off topic and a discussion for another thread.

I’d also be interested to hear your thoughts on Shapley’s physics arguments for why cepheids aren’t binary stars. I find his discussion on irregular periods and changing stellar classes not being compatible with binary motion interesting. But that may also be off topic and a discussion for another thread.

On topic, can I ask you a question about large stellar distances as a concept? Reading your book I get the impression that you feel they are absurd in principal. Please correct me if I’m wrong, as I don’t want to misrepresent your argument. I was just hoping you could elaborate on why you are against them in principal?

For example, we know the solar system is in the order of several AU in size. Would you agree? I’m going to suggest for a moment that the solar system is neither particularly large nor particularly small, and that other systems would also be in the order of AU.

If we were to arrange all the star systems next to each other in a hexagonal grid, owing to the vast number of star systems in the galaxy this grid would necessarily measure millions of AU across.

We know that star systems are not next to each other like that. Whether you follow Copernican astronomy or the Tychos we can see that the stars are spread out at distances which are large compared to the size of the system. If the size of these star systems is in the order of AU then the distances between them would be in the order of thousands of AU. So while the stars may or may not be that far away, the concept itself doesn’t seem absurd.

Sorry that was a long post.

Dear Scsa, you wrote:

On topic, can I ask you a question about large stellar distances as a concept? Reading your book I get the impression that you feel they are absurd in principal. Please correct me if I’m wrong, as I don’t want to misrepresent your argument. I was just hoping you could elaborate on why you are against them in principal?

Firstly, please forgive me for correcting your English (I hate to sound pedantic, but too many people nowadays seem to mix up the terms ‘principal’ and principle’. Now, there are numerous reasons why I would reject, in principle, the idea that the stars are as distant as currently claimed. Mind you, I’m certainly not alone in holding this stance: Tycho Brahe (arguably the foremost observational astronomer of all times) famously rejected the Copernican model on the grounds of the ginormous distances that the stars would have to be. You then wrote:

Would you mind explaining how Tychos solves the Deneb question? If your direct parallax distance measurement is using the same angle with the same uncertainty, you will have the same proportional uncertainty in distance. Are the indirect distance measurements easier and more reliable under the Tychos paradigm? [my bolds]

Of course not! The Tychos paradigm doesn’t make any measurements easier and reliable than what they ARE… However, it goes to show just why measuring the distance / parallax / and size of our distant stars is such a tricky thing. If the Earth only moves by 7018 km every six months (a period in which Copernicans believe that we move ‘sideways’ (against a given celestial quadrant) by 299million km, their trigonometric measurements will be “off” by a factor of ca. 42633.

As I’ve already mentioned, there is no consensus (even today) as to precisely how distant Deneb would be - but if we use the “2615 Light Year” figure (currently published on Wikipedia), this would mean that Deneb is more than 165 000 000 (165million) times further away than our Sun (whose angular diameter only subtends a mere 0.5°). Yet, Deneb is the 19th brightest star in our skies and can, of course, be easily seen with our naked eyes. If this doesn’t at least make you raise your eyebrows, dear Scsa, I fear that nothing that I could say will ever make you question the core principles of the heliocentric model. However, let me try to appeal to your intuitive senses: if my 42633 reduction factor is correct, this would stil make Deneb 3870 X more distant (rather than 165 MILLION X) than our Sun. Doesn’t this sound a little more reasonable to you?

As for your other questions, I have a distinct feeling that you haven’t yet finished reading the 32 chapters of my book. For instance, in Chapter 25, I show how the Tychos can readily explain and account for the observed “negative” stellar parallaxes - which are simply absurd and impossible within the Copernican / heliocentric paradigm. Then, in Chapter 29, I illustrate how the observed retrograde motions of asteroid Eros roundly disproves the Copernican theory (and principle) for the retrograde motions phenomena.

By all means, keep your questions coming - but please make sure to have read the Tychos book in its entirety, :slight_smile:

P.S. : You wrote that “after all, only 13% of the planets in our solar system are inhabited.” Well, I have no idea where you got that from. Surely not from this NASA article? :smiley:

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I know you have reasons why you think the calculated distances should be smaller, but your comments in the book implied you thought large distances were somehow absurd as a concept. That’s what I was asking about. Why the very notion of trillions of km is laughable. Personally I think they seem perfectly reasonable on the face of it if one just assumes other star systems are similar in size.

Deneb being 3870 x more distant than the sun is neither more or less reasonable without context. I have no issue with 165 million x more distant as there are perfectly convincing arguments for how a star such as Deneb could be bright enough to still be visible at such a distance. Afterall the sun would still be visible at a distance of several light years. With enough mass and surface area a star can radiate enough energy to be tens of thousands of times as bright as the sun. I do have reservations about your calculated distance for Sirius as this would place it between the distances of Saturn and Uranus. Sirius can be resolved to a significantly smaller angular size than Uranus and so must be significantly smaller in actual size if it is closer to us. Which would be incredibly small for an object to trigger nuclear fusion via gravitational pressure.

I read chapter 25. I was left with questions. Such as have you looked at the distribution of positive and negative parallax stars to see if they cluster on either side of the earth? And what limit of detection did you assume when determining the % of zero parallax stars in front and behind the earth in the Tychos model?

I said our solar system. There are 8 planets in our solar system and only 1 is inhabited.

Well, dear Scsa - if you have ever looked up in the night sky (with your naked eyes), you will know that Sirius is several orders of magnitude larger and brighter than Uranus. Sirius is extremely easy to find - much unlike Uranus. By the way, have you ever been able to see Uranus with your naked eyes? (be honest now). So, what exactly is your point? Why couldn’t Sirius be closer to us than Uranus?

You then asked:

I read chapter 25. I was left with questions. Such as have you looked at the distribution of positive and negative parallax stars to see if they cluster on either side of the earth?

Well, this is when you need to read more carefully the part of Chapter 25, where I specify that …

“Depending on which of the four quadrants is scanned, nearby stars will appear to drift by different amounts and directions (or not at all). In all logic, nearby stars located in the “lower quadrant” of the above graphic will exhibit positive parallax, whereas nearby stars in the “upper quadrant” will exhibit negative parallax. On the other hand, nearby stars located in the “left and right” quadrants of the above graphic will exhibit little or no parallax at all - since we are moving either away or towards them. (Note: we shall soon see that it gets rather more complicated than that, since parallax measurements will also depend on the particular annual time-window chosen to measure a given star’s parallax).

I know, the question of negative / positive / and zero parallax is a rather tricky thing to wrap your head around - but if you dedicate an adequate amount of time to do so, it should all become clear. In any event, the Tychos is the only existing model of our solar system that can account for the observed ‘negative’ and ‘zero’ stellar parallaxes

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Well, dear Scsa - if you have ever looked up in the night sky (with your naked eyes), you will know that Sirius is several orders of magnitude larger and brighter than Uranus. Sirius is extremely easy to find - much unlike Uranus. By the way, have you ever been able to see Uranus with your naked eyes? (be honest now). So, what exactly is your point? Why couldn’t Sirius be closer to us than Uranus?

I haven’t, no (though in really dark skies it should be just about possible for someone with good eyesight to see Uranus). But then Uranus is a planet reflecting the Sun’s light back at us, which depends on the size, distance and albedo of the object. Sirius is supposedly a star generating its own energy and radiating it towards us. We know the sun would be visible out to about 58 light years, so if Sirius was comparable to the Sun then we’d expect it to also be visible from several light years away.

Sirius only appears that size to the naked eye because your pupil is only a few mm in diameter. So can’t resolves things to smaller than about 20 arcseconds. My 400mm telescope would be able to resolve Sirius to a significantly smaller angular size than Uranus. So while Sirius could be closer than Uranus and smaller it would a) be too small to sustain fusion based on our current understanding and b) if all other stars are this small doesn’t that go counter to your argument that the Sun should be binary if 85+% of the other stars are? Should the Sun not share other properties with the majority of stars in the sky?

As an aside, I think this talk of naked eye measurements is worth exploring briefly. I’m going to agree with you that Tycho Brahe was a smart man. I can believe it when people refer to him as the greatest naked eye astronomer ever. He was, however, never given the chance to use a telescope for his measurements. Given that Brahe was very smart, I feel it would be a disservice to him to not assume that if he’d been able to compare the planets and the stars through a telescope that he wouldn’t have thought “the stars appear smaller than the planets through this, so must either be smaller than the planets or much further away”.

I know, the question of negative / positive / and zero parallax is a rather tricky thing to wrap your head around - but if you dedicate an adequate amount of time to do so, it should all become clear. In any event, the Tychos is the only existing model of our solar system that can account for the observed ‘negative’ and ‘zero’ stellar parallaxes

We’d also expect negative parallax values for a range of distances if you are correct. So some close stars should have negative parallax in the order of 100 mas.

Astronomers do account for negative parallax. You don’t agree with them. Technically in the Tychos model the only stars with truly zero parallax would be those directly along the axis of motion. Anything off that axis would have a slight parallax value. So it would depend on your limit of detection. In the Copernican system we only have zero parallax when the distance is too great to accurately measure the parallax.

Dear Scsa, you wrote:

As an aside, I think this talk of naked eye measurements is worth exploring briefly. I’m going to agree with you that Tycho Brahe was a smart man. I can believe it when people refer to him as the greatest naked eye astronomer ever. He was, however, never given the chance to use a telescope for his measurements.

I’m glad that you agree that Tycho Brahe was a smart man - and that naked eye measurements are worth exploring, so let’s do just that. As an example, I will use the star Vega (the fifth brightest star in our skies). As you may know, Tycho Brahe estimated Vega’s angular diameter to be 120" arcseconds. This is 16 X smaller than the angular diameter of the Sun (1920" arcseconds).

As you probably also are aware of, modern astronomers contend that the “actual / true” angular diameter of Vega is 0.0029" arcseconds. This is about 622000 (622 thousand) times smaller than the Sun’s observed (and undisputed) angular diameter… You better believe it ! :smiley:

So let’s do a no-nonsense reality check and see what an object 16 X smaller than the Sun would look like. My below graphic compares the observed angular diameter of the Sun with an object 16 X smaller than itself. Today, I went out in my garden and held up (at arm’s length) an old LP vinyl record towards the Sun. Well, the Sun’s disk just fitted into the central, 7mm-hole in the vinyl disk. Of course, this is something that anyone can verify for themselves - with their naked eyes:

I can only hope that you’ll agree that Tycho Brahe’s estimate of Vega’s angular diameter was a quite reasonable and plausible assessment - since Vega appears to our naked eyes to be fairly consistent with my above comparison. Now, if some time-traveller had knocked on Tycho’s door and told him that people in the telescopic age believed that Vega’s “true” angular diameter was “in actuality” 622000 X smaller than the Sun, he would surely have wet his pants in uncontrollable fits of laughter - and would promptly have confined his time-travelling visitor to a Danish madhouse.

And now, dear Scsa, consider this: Tycho’s estimate of 120" (for the angular diameter of Vega) is just about 41380 X larger than 0.0029" (the currently-stated value). Well, my TYCHOS model stipulates that the stars are about 42633 X closer than currently believed. A pretty close match, don’t you think?

As for your objection that, in the TYCHOS model, “stars would be too small to sustain fusion based on our current understanding”, you obviously haven’t read with due attention Chapter 23 of my book where I clearly and specifically state that…

“If the stars are 42633 X closer than thought, it doesn’t necessarily follow that their diameters are 42633 X smaller than currently estimated.”

You see, Vega is officially reckoned to be 2.3 X larger than the Sun - and to be located 25.04 light years away. In the TYCHOS model, 1 light year = 1.4834 AU (i.e. 42633X less than 1 light year). Hence, in the TYCHOS model, the EARTH–>VEGA distance would amount to: 25.04 X 1.4834 = 37.144 AU. Remember now that Tycho Brahe estimated VEGA’s angular diameter to be about 16X smaller than our sun. Well, if Vega is truly 37.144X more distant than the Sun (and appears to be 16X smaller), it would indeed be about 2.3X larger than the Sun :

37.144/16 = 2.3215

Hope this helps! :slight_smile:

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I’m glad that you agree that Tycho Brahe was a smart man - and that naked eye measurements are worth exploring, so let’s do just that. As an example, I will use the star Vega (the fifth brightest star in our skies). As you may know, Tycho Brahe estimated Vega’s angular diameter to be 120" arcseconds. This is 16 X smaller than the angular diameter of the Sun (1920" arcseconds).

Tycho Brahe was wrong because his instruments and his eyes were not capable of measuring small enough values. So all of his angular sizes are over estimates.

So let’s do a no-nonsense reality check and see what an object 16 X smaller than the Sun would look like. My below graphic compares the observed angular diameter of the Sun with an object 16 X smaller than itself. Today, I went out in my garden and held up (at arm’s length) an old LP vinyl record towards the Sun. Well, the Sun’s disk just fitted into the central, 7mm-hole in the vinyl disk. Of course, this is something that anyone can verify for themselves - with their naked eyes

This is not a complete way of looking at this though. It’s not about angular size, it’s about if enough photons are hitting your detection device to pick out the object. For example, we know the sun would be at the limit of detection for the human eye at a distance of about 58 light years. The eye would still be receiving enough photons to see the sun at that distance. At that distance the sun’s true angular diameter would be 0.5 mas. Of course the human eye wouldn’t see it as 0.5 mas due to the way diffraction limited optics work.

Now, if some time-traveller had knocked on Tycho’s door and told him that people in the telescopic age believed that Vega’s “true” angular diameter was “in actuality” 622000 X smaller than the Sun, he would surely have wet his pants in uncontrollable fits of laughter - and would promptly have confined his time-travelling visitor to a Danish madhouse.

Until they gave him a telescope to look through. At which point I’m sure he’d have exclaimed “Hellige lort!” (I’m going to blame Google translate if that is wrong), rethought his assumptions and got to work making better measurements with this wonderful new device. The man was a scientist after all.

I can only hope that you’ll agree that Tycho Brahe’s estimate of Vega’s angular diameter was a quite reasonable and plausible assessment - since Vega appears to our naked eyes to be fairly consistent with my above comparison

The angular size of an object is limited by the diameter of the aperture being used to observe it. Where this is the human pupil, a camera lens or a telescope. Naked eye measurements are useless for working out how big the stars are because the eye is physically incapable of resolving them smaller than about 20 arcsec.

As for your objection that, in the TYCHOS model, “stars would be too small to sustain fusion based on our current understanding”, you obviously haven’t read with due attention Chapter 23 of my book where I clearly and specifically state that…
“If the stars are 42633 X closer than thought, it doesn’t necessarily follow that their diameters are 42633 X smaller than currently estimated.”

I wasn’t calculating the size of Sirius as 42633 time smaller, I was comparing its size to Uranus. We know how big Uranus is and how far away. We can see that Sirius looks smaller than Uranus (if using a proper optical instrument and not relying on limited naked eye estimations). So Sirius must either be further away than Uranus or smaller than Uranus.

Remember now that Tycho Brahe estimated VEGA’s angular diameter to be about 16X smaller than our sun.

Tycho Brahe was using limited measurement devices and so massively over estimated the angular size of objects.