Comet NeoWise

Delighted with myself! I've been hauling myself and some confused dogs up the hill behind my house every night looking for Neowise without ever a hope of seeing it. Finally saw it tonight, much bigger than I expected but not very bright (bit like myself). It's cold and clear out there tonight, very rewarding skygazing.

The dual effects of experimental theorists ('climate change' for example) and celestial sphere enthusiasts (descriptions of the comet without solar system context) are a product of Royal Society empiricism which unfortunately dominates this era.

The 17th century experimental method is like a virus which hijacked the machinery of astronomy and re-directed astronomical predictions towards experimental predictions as universal theories. It used the late 17th century equatorial coordinate system (RA/Dec) to make astronomical observations subservient to timekeeping or what became the 'clockwork solar system' of Newton thereby turning interpretation of the motions of the planet and the structure of the solar system on its head.

Whereas the geocentric astronomers and the original heliocentric astronomers could predict astronomical events as dates within the calendar system, the RA/Dec system allowed observers to predict events using the 24 hour clock within those dates. The trade-off was that more accurate predictions meant a loss of cause and effect that is more drastic than geocentricity, after all, those venerable astronomers distinguished between the direct motion of the Sun through the background field of stars while the planets wandered while RA/Dec also puts the Sun in a wandering motion -

https://community.dur.ac.uk/john.lucey/users/sun_ecliptic.gif

https://community.dur.ac.uk/john.lucey/users/solar_year.gif


Our era is trapped within a conundrum created by two groups with a definite beginning in late 17th century England. Because academic society is dominated by these empirical descriptions, the stranglehold looks unbreakable, however, a glimpse of something new and exciting permits the perceptive or intuitive side of humanity to escape the intellectual gridlock created by people who organised things to suit themselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AEluR-CBu4&t=39s

The comet just reminds people of what astronomy and Earth sciences used to be with the connection between the motions of the planet and Earth sciences still in its infancy.