Originally posted by this_is_who_we_are
The time change used to be a month from now.
In Spring.
It's still Winter until the 20th.
They moved up the date to March in 2005.
7 years ago.
It used to begin on the first Sunday in April.
So... doesn't anyone suspect it was changed for some hidden, nefarious reason?
I do.
But I can't put my finger on it.
But that Sun rising 2 days early in Greenland thing comes to mind.
Plus degrees in December (Polar night ends TWO DAYS early? )
www.abovetopsecret.com...
And the Boat/Smile Moon thing too.
Welcome to the Equator!! Everywhere on Earth !! USA-UK-Canada
www.abovetopsecret.com...edit on 3/11/2012 by this_is_who_we_are because: typo
The time change is an arbitrary decision made for energy conservation reasons. It does not mean the actual position of the sun or moon shifted by
several weeks. Astronomers predict and measure the positions of the sun and moon according to Greenwich Mean Time, which does not fall under daylight
savings time.
The whole premature sunrise in Greenland a couple of years ago indicates an abnormally high amount of atmospheric refraction. This is nothing new;
historically this same phenomenon has been seen as early as 400 years ago to make the sun rise prematurely at polar locations by as much as two weeks,
and do so consistently on multiple days prior to when sunrise should have occurred.
In the next place, Gerrit de Veer states explicitly that he and two of his companions "saw the edge of the sun" on the 24th of January, and that
on the 27th of that month they "all went forth and saw the sunne in his full round-nesse a little above the horizon"; and again, that on 31st they
"went out and saw the sunne shine cleare"; and lastly, on the 8th of February, they "saw the sun rise south-east, and went down south south-west."
On the intervening days, the weather being cloudy or otherwise unfavorable, they had no opportunity of observing the sun.
page cliii of "The three voyages of William Barentz to the Arctic regions"
At de Veer's location, 75 degrees 45 minutes north latitude, the sun's upper edge wasn't even supposed to be seen until February 9th.
As for the "horizontal" or "cheshire" moon, that is not an exclusively equatorial phenomenon. It is perfectly normal to see it occur even at
latitudes beyond the tropics. It's an effect of the position-angle of the moon's bright limb combined with field rotation. You can use tables of
the moon published in books decades ago to predict the moon's position and thereby predict its appearance for any given location.
And on that note, I'm currently working on expanding the above spreadsheet to calculate the sun's apparent position as well using data derived from
Simon Newcomb's tables of the sun, which were published in the late 19th century. I've already got a first order approximation of Newcomb's tables
correctly calculating the sun's geocentric coordinates to within about 2 arcseconds or so (far beyond the limit of human vision) and I've verified
that ephemeris generated directly from his tables agree with modern ephemeris to within about half an arcsecond (the effective limit of most
telescopes' resolution due to atmospheric seeing).
The bottom line is that I will be making another video soon with this updated version validating the position of the sun as well, as soon as the
weather permits me to do so. I guarantee that it will show the same thing my lunar calculations showed; that things are where they're supposed to
be. If it didn't,
then you would have something to worry about, but the change in the DST dates has nothing to do with this.
