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I'm a Scorpio and Scorpios don't believe in astrology.

gl


On 12/5/2010 10:42 PM, Frank Reed wrote:
>
> Gary, you wrote:
> "But even the ancients noticed that the sun had changed its position
> in relationship to the stars at the time of the solstices and equinoxes."
>
> Yes, Gary, but precession is a PURE ROTATION of the coordinate system.
> The point here is that it does not change the "immutability" of the
> firmament. For comparison, obviously when the stars change their
> altitudes and azimuths all during the night, we can still treat them
> as if they are fixed on a celestial sphere. Sirius climbs from 10 to
> 20 to 30 degrees, while Rigel rises from 30 to 37 to 40 degrees in the
> same period of time. The coordinates are changing, but the relative
> relationships of the stars on the "immutable firmament" of the
> celestial sphere does not change. Apart from refraction, the angles
> between the stars do not change during this daily rotation of the
> coordinates. While precession is drastically slower, it is exactly the
> same sort of thing. Over the course of 26,000 years, the celestial
> sphere rotates around the axis passing through the north and south
> ecliptic poles. And just like the daily rotation, this does not
> require us to drop the idea of an immutable celestial sphere. And sure
> enough, Hipparchus and Ptolemy did NOT abandon the celestial sphere
> even though Hipparchus had discovered precession.
>
> The "mutability" of the celestial sphere only comes about when we
> recognize that the stars are other individual celestial objects each
> with its own specific motion. And again, if you want to see evidence
> of this, look at the angular distance between Arcturus and Spica over
> the past couple of hundred years. Arcturus is a fast-moving star. It
> certainly isn't tied down to any "immutable" sphere of quintessence!
>
> Gary, you wrote:
> "I have always chuckled at astrology that assigns statuses to people
> born while the sun is in a particular constellation. The problem with
> this is that the dates given for the sun being in the birth
> constellation are incorrect and the sun is actually one and a half
> constellations removed from the stated constellation for those dates
> due to precession of the equinoxes over the time period since the
> astrologers set up their reckoning."
>
> I've got to warn you, Gary, that this isn't true AT ALL. Do you really
> suppose that astrologers would somehow have missed the news out of
> Greece 21 centuries ago informing the world of the existence of the
> precession of the equinoxes?? Professional or "real" astrologers are,
> in fact, well aware of this. The problem for people who know just
> enough astronomy to mock astrologers is that they don't understand
> what the zodiacal signs are (there are, by the way, plenty of
> excellent reasons to doubt astrology, but this is not one of them).
> The signs of the zodiac are indeed named after the constellations, but
> they are not the same as the constellations. The signs, from a
> mathematical perspective, can be considered nothing more than an
> extension of the sexagesimal system of degrees, minutes, and seconds.
> They are simply thirty-degree divisions of the circle. So, for
> example, I can express a position in a circle as 3s, 10d, 15', 59"
> where "3s" means "third sign". Depending on whether the numbering
> starts with zero or one, this "3s" would be equivalent to either 90 or
> 60 degrees. When applied to the ecliptic, these thirty-degree bands of
> ecliptic longitude are given names (corresponding to the
> constellations lined up with them thousands of years ago). So the
> first thirty-degree band is called Aries, the second Taurus, and so
> on. Thus the position of a planet could be given in quick shorthand as
> "Aries 12" or "Taurus 28" which, in modern terminology, would mean
> that the ecliptic longitude of that planet is 12 degrees or 58 degrees
> respectively. Is that easier? Is it perhaps easier to remember "Taurus
> 28"?? I would say that it depends on what you're used to. It rather
> reminds me of "Klondike 5-1234" being replaced by "555-1234" (see the
> PS if that is an unfamiliar reference for anyone following along).
>
> Now you might think that only superstitious astrologers would use such
> a weird system as attaching verbal labels to bands of ecliptic
> longitude or using names that do not reflect the current sky, but it's
> not so. As late as the early 19th century, professional astronomers
> still used the "S.D.M.S." (sign, degree, minute, second) system for
> listing ecliptic longitudes. I am attaching a page from the Nautical
> Almanac from 1820. And note that this is not back in the dark ages.
> This is over a century after Isaac Newton, decades after the discovery
> of the planet Uranus (known as the "Georgian" in Britain back then),
> and it's after the Enlightenment and the birth of real modern science.
> Nonetheless, they used the zodiac signs to specify the positions of
> the planets. In the attached almanac page, the geocentric longitude
> (meaning geocentric longitude in ecliptic coordinates) for Mercury on
> April 1, 1820 is listed under S.D.M. as 0.27.27. For us today, that's
> just 27d 27' ecliptic longitude. Meanwhile, at the bottom, the
> longitude of the Georgian is 8.28.48 which would be, as a modern
> angle, 268d 48' (268=8*30+28).
>
> And lest you still think you might mock astrologers for using such an
> old-fashioned, nearly two-hundred-years obsolete, system for naming
> positions along the ecliptic, bear in mind that a clever enough
> astrologer can turn the tables on you and point out that celestial
> navigators do EXACTLY the same thing in one special case, a vestige of
> that common usage from 200 years ago. The "GHA of Aries", so important
> in navigation, does not refer to the constellation Aries at all. It's
> almost as if celestial navigators are "too stupid to realize that
> precession exists" (so a debating astrologer might say). But no, this
> is just the old system for labeling the ecliptic. It's called Aries
> because that's the name for the first band of thirty degrees, the zero
> point of ecliptic longitude, starting from the point where the
> ecliptic crosses the celestial equator north-bound.
>
> By the way, there are some very intelligent people who post here who
> take a serious interest in astrology and do not consider it nonsense.
>
> ...Not me.
>
> -FER
> PS: I said above that the change in the system for labeling points on
> the ecliptic "reminds me of Klondike 5-1234 being replaced by
> 555-1234". For those, especially outside the US, who are scratching
> their heads, this was the old system for listing phone number in the
> United States (and some other countries). A number in a local exchange
> has a three-digit exchange number followed by four digits for the
> specific number. Those local exchanges used to be known by letters
> which were then given mnemonic names like "Klondike". Until the early
> 1960s (so I have read), most phone numbers were listed with this mixed
> alphanumeric system and you can still here "Klondike" numbers in old
> movies and tv shows. More here:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_number.
>
>
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