Dear Peaker,
I much appreciate your questions - as they give me an opportunity (and renewed inspiration) to further illustrate why the Copernican model is geometrically impossible. As Patrik rightly says though, when it comes to (for instance) the retrograde motions of Mars, you need to be extra careful as to what arguments to put forth to your (I assume) “Copernican-minded” friends. For example, the argument that the angular size of Mars is observed to increase at the ‘peak’ of Mars’s retrograde periods is rather weak: this, because Copernicans will tell you that, as Earth passes closest to Mars (as it ‘overtakes Mars on its inside lane’), Mars’s angular size will naturally increase.
At the end of Chapter 5 of my book I thoroughly expound and illustrate just why the observed retrograde periods of Mars would be absurd (i.e. physically & optically impossible) under the heliocentric model. However, I’m happy to provide even more evidence to this fact - and what follows should definitively settle the matter.
I shall use once more a timelapse sequence by the famed astrophotographer Tunc Tezel to make my case: namely, his depiction of the 2012 retrograde motions of Mars. I think we can safely assume that Mr. Tezel is a trustworthy professional - and that what he depicted was exactly what was actually / empirically observed from Earth. So, first of all, let’s see how this 2012 event (and Mars’s observed ‘looping’ trajectory) was depicted by Mr. Tezel - and how it compares with the path traced by the Tychosium simulator:
The Tychosium, it seems, does a pretty good job at re-enacting Tunc Tezel’s timelapse sequence
The fact that Tezel’s image sequence is inclined by about 24° is simply due to the Earth’s axial tilt.
As you can see, I have chosen two dates (“A” and “B”) when Mars was observed to transit at almost the same longitude (RA) in our skies.
“A” occurred on 2012-03-08 ---------- and “B” occurred on 2012-05-27.
Note that “B” is slightly to the left of “A” - by a mere whisker though : Mars was at pretty much the same longitude on both dates - and was facing almost the same stars on both occasions. Now, let’s see how the Tychosium depicts these two Mars passages:
Indeed, the Tychosium confirms that the “
B” position of Mars would have been very slightly to the left of its “
A” position (as viewed from Earth) - and thus, Mars would have been facing roughly the same stars.
Next, let’s see how a heliocentric simulator (“The SKY LIVE”) depicts the “A” and “B” positions:
I trust that the absurdities implied by the above depiciton (by The SKY LIVE simulator) will be immediately obvious and crystal clear - to any person gifted with some basic sense of spatial perspective. However, let me highlight and underline these absurdities - for those who may have problems envisioning this whole affair:
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Firstly, Earth is assumed - by the Copernicans - to move around its (supposed) orbit around the Sun at a considerably higher speed than Mars (107226 km/h versus 86652 km/h - or about 20% faster!).
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Secondly, Earth’s orbit is obviously assumed to be SMALLER than the orbit of Mars.
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YET, and in spite of the two above assumptions, the “SKY LIVE” simulator shows that the “A” and “B” vectors are DIVERGING by more than 3°! In other words, they cannot POSSIBLY be reconciled with Tunc Tezel’s timelapse sequence of Mars’s empirically-observed 2012 retrograde motion.
In conclusion, the “A” and “B” positons of Mars (as photographed by Tunc Tezel) are perfectly consistent with the TYCHOS model - and utterly impossible within the Copernican model.