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THE PERPLEXING MARS DECLINATIONS
To those who may not know what 'declination' means in astronomical terms, it is simply the elevation angle at which an observer on Earth will see any celestial object in the sky. For instance, the Sun will be at about +23,5°dec in June and at -23,5°dec in December. This, we are told, is due to the axial tilt of our planet - which would also be the reason for our seasons. But I'm sure you've all heard of this before. So let me get on to my ongoing study of Mars which have led me to some remarkable realizations which, I believe, merit consideration in their own right - on the basis of plain logic and fully verifiable empirical observations. To be sure, I now think that the most accurate statement Kepler ever uttered was that
"Mars is the key to understanding our Universe". For now, however, I'll only make some points about the perplexing declinations of Mars as it circles our planet once in about two of our Earth years.
The orbit of Mars is said to be inclined by a modest
1,85° in relation to the ecliptic (which is the 0° plane we consider our Earth's orbit to be in relation to the Sun). Indeed, most planets' orbits are believed (in the heliocentric Copernican solar system) to be pretty much 'level' with each other - with a few exceptions such as Mercury (approx 7°) and Pluto (a hefty 17°- yet Pluto is not considered to be a planet anymore). Here's a conventional diagram of our epoch's universally accepted Copernican model - which one may rightly call with a pinch of irony, the "FLAT" universe:
Let us now look at how MARS 'behaves' in the skies - as seen from Earth. We will start with this screenshot from the NEAVE planetarium which shows MARS and the SUN side by side, as it is predicted that they will be on June 22, 2015. As you can see, they both appear to be at almost identical declinations - and we should probably presume that this would be due to our Earth's axial tilt :
Fig.1:
So, should we not expect to see Mars, six months later (as we go halfway around the Sun) to 'descend' at (almost) the same rate as the Sun? Of course, we have to keep in mind Mars's 1,85° orbital inclination, so we should also logically expect Mars's declination to be offset with the Sun's declination by a maximum of 3,7°(1,85°X2). Well... here is what we can actually observe six months later - in December:
Fig2:
Evidently, Mars's orbit is NOT offset with Earth's ecliptic plane by only 1,85°. Now, one may argue that this enormous 16° discrepancy is due to Mars's considerable distance from Earth (but if so, how is the 1,85° Mars orbit inclination calculated?). In Figure 1, we see that Mars in June is at 2.57AU from Earth - while having this steep +24°6' declination (1 AU is equal to 150 million km, our alleged distance to the Sun).
Well, as we will now see, in August 2018, Mars will have a declination of an equally steep
-26°29' while being extremely close to Earth, this time at a distance from Earth of only 0,4 AU. The very same day, the Sun will be at a declination of
+13°26'... That's a MARS-vs-SUN declination-discrepancy of
39°!!! Holy Planets! What's going on here? Here are three sequential MARS/SUN declinations - from August 2018 to May 2019:
I know, your head is probably spinning by now - as this needs plenty of time and effort to be properly processed and assessed (unless you are already familiar with these peculiar astronomy terms and measurements). Anyway, I have taken the three above positions of MARS and inserted them into my Tycho/SSSS model - which postulates that the Sun and Mars both revolve around a stationary (yet rotating) Earth. As far as I can tell, within my model, those Mars declinations work out pretty well. However, and as ever, it is up to the reader to evaluate all this for him/herself:
(the max and min declinations which I have of MARS, +27° and -28°, are deduced from this chart which lists decades of astronomical observations of MARS's oppositions: http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/onlinebk ... PPENDS.HTM )
There's plenty more to come, so please stay tuned. The SUN-MARS relationship appears to be quite astonishing ...