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

Shouldnt of said anything until you had treble checked really Astro, you know some form of tard will get all doomy on this shit.

Quite possible.

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.

Mods, ...

Assuming that Polaris is off by 6 degrees - what does that mean for us here on Earth in Layman's terms?

Thanks

Dr. Astro, is there anyone you can contact at a major observatory to confirm your finding? I assume you have astronomy pals all over the world with access to awesome tools. I know very little about your field, but it seems that this is something that could be easily checked by other astronomers.

Best thread of the week.

Dr. Astro, is there anyone you can contact at a major observatory to confirm your finding? I assume you have astronomy pals all over the world with access to awesome tools. I know very little about your field, but it seems that this is something that could be easily checked by other astronomers.

Best thread of the week.

Last time I checked was January, but something like this would not be able to remain hidden for long before amateurs would either find it and mention it, or entire astronomy neighborhoods get wiped out. Last I checked the guys at Arizona sky village and chiefland astronomy village didn't all suddenly drop dead.

Assuming your previous calculations are correct, what does that entail?

The orion part was only to show that Orion itself hadn't moved relative to the surrounding stars. Fairly meaningless, but to cover all bases in response to the guy who said Orion was in the wrong place.

Will someone please answer this or has it already been discussed?

A change in Earth's tilt...

Quite possible.