Thursday 10 March 2016

150) “If Earth were a spinning ball it would be impossible to photograph star-trail time-lapses turning perfect circles around Polaris anywhere but the North Pole. At all other vantage points the stars would be seen to travel more or less horizontally across the observer’s horizon due to the alleged 1000mph motion beneath their feet. In reality, however, Polaris’s surrounding stars can always be photographed turning perfect circles around the central star all the way down to the Tropic of Capricorn.”

In order to get a circular star trail pattern like the one shown, you just have to be able to see Polaris. That doesn’t mean that you have to be at the North Pole!  Why should it?

In fact you can see Polaris across the whole Northern hemisphere. Remember that Polaris is 323 light years away, while the diameter of the Earth is only 1.3468 × 10^-9 light years  ( that is 00000001.3468  of a light year. So the line of sight from near the equator on one side of the Earth would be almost parallel with that on the other side of the equator.

It’s clear that no part of the northern hemisphere should or does block our view of Polaris.


(In fact, Mr Dubay falsely claimed before in Point 99 that we could see it from 20 degrees south, yet now he says you’d have to be at the North Pole. Make your mind up!  But consistency is too much to ask.)

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