Retrograde, parallax and planetary animations and models

The Tychos simulator by Patrik is so much fun to tinker with!

One of the most amazing things to me is to watch similar animations on Youtube which use almost the exact same animations to show Ptolemy’s model (to disprove it) as you can see here: UNL Astronomy

However, moments later when they want to discredit the epicycle theory they resort to a crude model, please have a look.

Now, if a computer animation can be used to model retrograde motion for the first example, why cannot we employ computer animation to model today’s accepted model?

And am I incorrect in saying that their physical planetary model only demonstrates parallax and not retrograde motion?

I would appreciate anyone’s thoughts on this.

Dear schoepffer, I’m glad you’re having fun with the truly wondrous Tychosium simulator :slight_smile:

For the benefit of the newcomers to this forum, let me just once more reiterate and emphasize that the Tychosium is the ONLY existing simulator of our Solar System that agrees with empirical observation (i,e. with all observational astronomy data & tables gathered throughout the centuries). There simply isn’t any other way to put it - and if I were a multi-millionaire, I would set up a $10 million prize to be collected by anyone capable to demonstrate the contrary.

I left a comment on that Youtube video you linked to - and, so far, it appears that it has been allowed to stay up (more often than not, Youtube automatically deletes my comments containing links to my TYCHOS book, or even just the title of the same… Pretty strange and most annoying, if you ask me!).

Here’s the comment I wrote (just in case it will be deleted at some later stage) :
“Unfortunately, this explanation for the observed retrogrades of our planets does not stand up to close scrutiny. Mars, for instance, is actually observed to retrograde for less time (61 days) and width during its CLOSEST passages to Earth (approx. 0.37AU) - and for more time (83 days) and width during its FURTHEST passages to Earth (approx. 0.67AU). This is contrary to the most basic laws of perspective - as thoroughly expounded and illustrated in my book “The TYCHOS - Our Geoaxial Binary System” (2022).”

So in answer to your question: yes, the heliocentric model simply CANNOT rationally explain nor demonstrate the observed retrograde motions of our surrounding planets or moons. The Copernican / Keplerian model is definitively disproven and irredeemably broken - beyond appeal - and the sooner people will realize this, the sooner we’ll manage to regain control of reason, common sense, rationality - and to restore sanity on this lovely planet of ours.

Dear Simon,

Thanks, I am in agreement with you about the Tychos simulator!

However, I am not as versed in the concepts of parrallax and retrograde as you are. The two are not the same, are they?

If I have this correct, and even as their animation shows, planets are ACTUALLY moving backwards in retrograde since they are in circular orbits. Parrallax on the other hand is an “illusion” since the object is still moving in the same direction.

Do I have this correct Simon?

Well, this is good! Let’s dig a little deeper into the mechanics of Retrograde.

And thankyou Schoepffer for bringing it up…I have said before here on this forum that this topic is of the utmost importance because it is the most accessible to us common folk…smiley face.

People are surprised to learn that the planets were easily separated from the stars because of Retrograde Motion as the average adult, in his casual glance at the night sky after dinner, can’t detect any such thing! And so he lives his life out in complete ignorance of it. Then there is the second level, where, one learns of this motion but swallows the common explantion for it hook, line and sinker( me for 30 years) and all along having an uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach that something, somehow is alluding you.

After watching the YT video that you have linked to I have something to add. It seems to me that the weakness of this wooden model is it’s scale. They can’t place the stars at the appropriate distance and, even the stars they have are spaced at their convenience. The sweep of the the red arrow thus ‘covers’ just the right amount of stars to ‘prove’ their theory. With a model using the proper scale the sweep would most likely cover a much bigger portion of the night sky than we acually observe.

A computer program could be written(Patrix?) that shows the acual scale of movement they are proposing.

It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that no such testing of this theory of ‘apparent retrograde motion’ has ever taken place and that is has remained in this infantile state, something like a nursery rhyme, since it’s inception.

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Thank you for the kind words about Tychosium.

Yes the official explanations for retrograde sound plausible but are in fact geometrically impossible as Simon explains in his book.

And furthermore, the retrogrades in the Tychos model are demonstrably correct as Tychosium shows.

A fun thing one can do (although it’s a little buggy and needs some more work) is to turn on the stars and then choose “look at Sun”. This will turn the Tychosium into a kind of Copernican model and show what is required for that model to work geometrically. And that is that the entire Universe follows Earth on it’s stroll around the Sun at 107000 kph. Ergo, heliocentrism is in fact a very special kind of geocentrism where the entire Universe except the Sun and the planets is locked to Earth by some mysterious force… :slight_smile:

And it’s funny with these myths and misconceptions. As opposed to what the video says, the Copernican model was MORE complicated than Ptolemy’s since it also used epicycles but required more of them to work.

And it was Tycho Brahe’s model that was the first to work without epicycles while still honoring constant speed circular motion.

Hi Patrik, thank you for that suggestion, I did that just now in fact. So can you explain what/why we see the back and forth motion of the stars when we “look at sun”?

These are not epicycles in your simulator? The animation in the linked video (Ptolemy’s model) was very similar to yours I thought.

I thought that the Stellarium demo of Mars they showed was very realistic, yet they seemed to have picked a specific retrograde that matched up better with their mock-up. I believe we could find a different retrograde of Mars that would falsify their crude model. Which I think is only demonstrating parrallax, is that right?

Kind regards,

Dear Schoepffer,

I would advise you to read with utmost attention Chapter 5 of my book, at the end of which I illustrate as clearly as humanly possible why the official explanations for the retrogradations of Mars are UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE - as they violate the most basic laws of perspective known to mankind. :slight_smile:

Dear Simon,

I have read it a dozen times. I have watched all the animations I can find on YT but none of it demonstrates what the viewer WOULD see.

Patrik’s model DEMONSTATES how the retrograde occurs, how the motion takes place. I cannot, though I have tried, glean anything useful from a static picture.

And, please correct me if I am wrong, parrallax and retrograde are not one in the same, is this correct?

Kind regards,

No, dear Schoepffer - parallax and retrograde motions are not one and the same and, in fact, you are touching a quite important question. You see, heliocentrists are actually saying that the reason why Mars is observed to periodically retrograde is due to a huge (and illusory) “PARALLAX EFFECT” caused by Earth overtaking Mars on its ‘inside lane’. The TYCHOS, on the other hand, demonstrates that Mars ACTUALLY retrogrades on its own, due to its trochoidal orbital motion.

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Hi! It just locks the camera to the Sun so it appears that it is the Earth that orbits the Sun. This is in essence what a Copernican orrery accomplishes but in a much more complex way. And a Copernican orrery can never display actual stars and have the planets conjunct with them because then the stars would have to do what we seen in Tychosium - move together with Earth as it goes around the Sun.

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Patrik,
Here is an animation that seems to have taken your concept and applied it to their version of heliocentricism.

Apparent Retrograde Motion (Visual Explanation)

This animation locks the sun and mars distance.

Thank you shoepffer. Very interesting. Truth in plain sight. If a line was added in the first animation where Earth orbits the Sun it would go “all over the place” in respect to the background stars. It’s only as we see in the second animation, when Earth is fixed and we have the Sun and Mars orbiting Earth, that retrogrades work geometrically.

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You put this quite succinctly here, Patrik, but I would like to see this expanded out a bit. You have mentioned before that The Tychos is the only orrery that can show the planets conjuncting with the appropriate stars but, in this paragraph you are building on that idea by giving an example of how this would play out under a particular circumstance. This is helpful.

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I posted a link to your book there!

I re-watched this ‘Apparent Retrograde Motion’ on YouTube just now and feel this needs to be discussed a little more on this forum.

I’m trying to place it in context with what I know about Retrograde Motion. Is it a throw-back to the epicycles of Geocentrism as it used to be understood? This particular animation is admitting that Mars swoops in and out majestically during retrograde periods but he doesn’t seem to think this is worth commenting on!

Patrix, I get what you are saying about the background stars and wish you would flesh this out in more detail… this is the lynchpin, what you are saying about the stars I mean; that any model worth the time has to account for the background stars.

I have emailed Martineau at Wooden Books twice now to ask if they could put one out on The Tychos or even Retrograde Motion. You see, they are always asking for suggestions and this theme would suit them to a tee. Anyone here familar with this publisher?

Greetings to alll “Retrograde Lovers” around the world ! :slight_smile:

Here’s a fun ‘summer quiz’ (or ‘winter quiz’ for our esteemed “down-under” members) that I’m submitting for your entertainment and thoughtful appraisal. I hope you’ll appreciate my ‘quiz format’ for discussing cosmic matters and that you’ll happily participate in solving the riddle…

So here are the facts: in 2012, both Mars and Eros (coincidentally) passed quite close to the Earth - and both were observed to briefly reverse direction (i.e. moving “retrograde”). Eros was exceptionally close to Earth (only about 0.2AU) while Mars was more than 3 times as distant (about 0.7AU). Now, before we get on - and in order to understand how this is ‘officially explained’ - you must do the effort to check out this NASA/JPL webpage which features a simulator of the supposed orbit of Eros, our most ‘famous’ asteroid. Here’s a screenshot I made of that NASA/JPL webpage:

In the top right corner of the NASA simulator you’ll find a ‘clock box’. Click on it - and insert the date 2012-03-01. This will get you to the situation shown in my above screenshot. You may then play around back and forth with the simulator to see just how both Eros and Mars were officially meant to pass close to Earth between January and April 2012.

You may now ask: “what was ACTUALLY OBSERVED of these retrograde motions? Have they been documented photographically?” The answer to this rightful question is : yes indeed.

At top left of my below image (a screenshot from the TYCHOSIUM simulator that you can all verify for yourselves) there’s a digital rendition of a timelapse photo-composite captured by the famed Turkish astrophotographer Tunc Tezel, documenting the observed 2012 Mars passage:

So now you may ask: “What about the EROS passage and retrograde motion? Has it also been documented?”

Well, the below image is from the Wikipedia entry for “asteroid Eros” which also features this curious sentence (my bolds):

"Under this condition, the asteroid actually appears to stop, but unlike the normal condition for a body in heliocentric conjunction with Earth, its retrograde motion is very small".


“Very small”? How so?

So here’s the core question of this intellectual “summer quiz” of mine:

How would you explain to a child the reason why Eros is observed to retrograde FAR LESS than Mars?

I know, it’s a pretty tough question - but you are allowed to ask assistance from your grandmothers who are usually very good at solving crosswords / sudokus and such like. :slight_smile:

Good question, I will ponder this.

Ok, I’ve done my homework and looked at the Tychosium as well.

Could it be that the retrograde of Eros is taking place closer to the Barycentre?

Ok, second try. The retrograde is taking place closer to Earth?

Ok Simon,

The orbits of Eros and Mars are nearly the same diameter. So I would not say that eccentricity is the cause. The cause seems to be the duration of the retrograde. Now what causes the difference between the two in terms of duration? The only thing that I see being very different is the steep angle of Eros’ orbit versus the relatively flat orbit of Mars in relationship to Earth.