Axial rotation measurement anomaly *Update on pg 21 - Problem Solved*

Love the thread because I don't understand what the hell it's about - but sounds smart and doomtastic. But...could you dumb it down for me? What are the implications of this anomaly?

You're obviously not familiar with Astro and his way of coping with this stuff.

He's one of the well known "voices of science" on this forum, often taking beating for it.

The fact he is now saying there seems to be something out of the place is worth carefully listening to, instead of jumping to conclusions of any kind.

For once, here's someone who actually knows his stuff. Please understand to appreciate the fact he's willing to lend that knowledge to the use of us and give him some time for further investigation before going tard yourself. ;)

The quake also shifted the position of the Earth's "figure" axis (which is different from the planet's north-south axis). This shift in Earth's figure axis will cause Earth to wobble a bit differently as it rotates, but it won't cause a shift of the Earth's axis in space -- only external forces such as the gravitational attraction of the sun, moon and planets could do that.

[link to content.usatoday.com]

Does this equate to the arcseconds?????? Just trying to understand if what Dr. Astro detected is the same or different from the axis change they discussed in the article.

Also from the article:

The 9.0 magnitude earthquake that ravaged Japan also shortened Earth's day by just over one-millionth of a second (1.8 microseconds to be exact), according to NASA. It also shifted the Earth's axis by about 6.5 inches.

Which very well could be the beginning of the Amateur Astronomer outcry if something does occur like this.

Not calling you an amateur Astro, you have a good strong brain, I've read your debunks often....most don't like to admit it but your the guy who is spot on. You are an anchor in the river of GLP.


I am patiently waiting for your next available scan.

Until then, have you identified any probable cause or is this still evading the mind atm?

/THREAD


Move along, nothing to see here.

Wow

A guy in a mobile home on another thread looks in the sky and believes he sees Orion in the wrong place in the sky, your Astro goes on that thread to debunk it and can't, then the egomaniac Astro starts his OWN thread piggy-backing off the other thread, and the mods here curtsy to their Queen Mother Astromut and un-pin the original thread and pin this nonsense to give Astromut all the attention his ego needs until this evening when his "clouds" miraculously part so he can see the sky and tell everyone that his initial findings were a mistake and there is nothing abnormal about Orion's place in the sky...and you and others applaud this joke?

Wow

A guy in a mobile home on another thread looks in the sky and believes he sees Orion in the wrong place in the sky, your Astro goes on that thread to debunk it and can't, then the egomaniac Astro starts his OWN thread piggy-backing off the other thread, and the mods here curtsy to their Queen Mother Astromut and un-pin the original thread and pin this nonsense to give Astromut all the attention his ego needs until this evening when his "clouds" miraculously part so he can see the sky and tell everyone that his initial findings were a mistake and there is nothing abnormal about Orion's place in the sky...and you and others applaud this joke?

It's impossible for this to be true without many, many people knowing about it. And not just pro's, people like me as well. So far I've heard nothing. That most likely means something went wrong last night with the tripod. I was joking that if it's real and there's still nothing heard about it except from me, then it must be because they're killing everyone and I'm next.

Not making a video. Somethings not adding up on the axial rotation measurement (and you all thought I was a "shill" - I'm honest, even when it's very likely nothing at all). Tonight I took a shortcut and just used my SLR with telephoto lens on a tripod rather than hauling out the whole telescope. I also only had a few minutes of a gap between clouds and then it was clouded up completely. But something about this picture I took isn't adding up...
[link to i319.photobucket.com]
I'm consistently coming back to a distance of about 35 arcminutes for Polaris from the north celestial pole. That ain't right. It should be just shy of 41 arcminutes. Now, I've never calibrated this lens astrometrically before tonight, but I used the Polaris image itself as well as an earlier image I shot a few months back and they both resulted in about the same image scale of about 8.2 arcseconds per pixel at the resolution I'm using for analysis. Maybe I screwed my math up somewhere along the way, I'm running on very little sleep and I need to get some now if I'm every going to.

For the sake of sanity in the thread and so that people don't start killing themselves before I can solve this mystery, I've never tried to use my SLR camera by itself for this particular measurement before (I've always used my telescopes with the SLR catching the light at prime focus) and the 300mm telephoto lens I have is rather heavy. I'm thinking something settled or flexed on my camera tripod over the 8 minute exposure, causing the star trails to be artificially shifted by about 6 arcminutes (and for what it's worth, that's a small angle, one fifth the diameter of the moon's disc, it's not something Bubba in his trailer is going to notice just by casually looking and comparing by eye to a mountain range).

The telescopes I normally use are much beefier and sturdier. I'll repeat the measurement telescopically tomorrow. If telescopic measurement confirms it... I'll probably take a sniper bullet in the head because there's no way that kind of change could be kept secret without a mass assassination of every person like me.