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Old 29th June 2017, 03:03 AM   #63
Lurch
Master Poster
 
Join Date: Sep 2016
Location: Ottawa
Posts: 2,530
Why does the Sun supposedly exhibit some special "spotlight" effect, and also suffer not insignificant refraction, in the minds of the flattards? The stars wheel about and suffer not *excessive* extinction due to atmospheric extinction near the horizon, and they are not grossly refracted either. In typical atmospheric conditions, objects outside the atmosphere when seen at the horizon are located by about 1/2 degree, or the diameter of the solar/lunar disk. And speaking of Luna, the same considerations apply (although it does exhibit some 2 degrees of parallax as seen from opposite sides of the Earth.)

If the Sun is supposedly located just a few thousand kilometers above us, how the heck can it subtend the very same angular diameter, exhibit the same brightness, *and* present the same orientation of its pattern of spots, prominences, etc. for all observers over a considerable fraction of the Earth's surface at the same time? The very considerable parallax would throw this notion out the window.

And that the Moon can be seen against the field of stars, we can *directly* and easily observe its parallax; anyone can take photos at the same time across continents and see this for themselves. For the Sun, determining its parallax is less obvious, but indirect means are not hard to undertake. If it were to be as near as just a few thousand kilometers, the parallax would be *huge* (10s of degrees), and there would have to be an *obvious* acceleration in its motion across the sky, instead of the virtually constant rate we see. Such a nearby object *cannot* exhibit anything like a uniform angular speed for observers widely separated by a distance of order the distance to the object. Perspective acceleration is *unavoidable.* And invoking atmospheric refraction ignores the pretty much uniform speed of the stars and the minimal effects of refraction (becoming meaningful only pretty darn near the horizon.)

Nope. The flattards really engage in some outlandish mental gymnastics in their efforts to try to fit their kooky theory to observational reality. Every scheme dreamed up runs into violent conflict with demonstrable observational *evidence* .
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