Chapter 8: The Sun's two moons - Mercury & Venus
8.1 Introduction
As briefly mentioned in Chapter 3, in the TYCHOS model, the two celestial bodies known as Mercury and Venus are not planets, as we are taught in school, but the two moons of the Sun—very much like Mars’ two moons, Phobos and Deimos. We shall now see how this can be demonstrated in a number of ways, and why the choice of word is not just a mundane matter of nomenclature. Unlike planets, moons have no lunar satellites of their own, rotate exceptionally slowly around their axes, and are tidally (or ‘magnetically’) locked, meaning they always show the same face to their host. To wit, a moon is a moon and should not be referred to as a ‘planet’.
8.2 Mercury: the Sun’s ‘junior moon’
Mercury was a grave matter of concern for astronomers in the last century, with its seemingly erratic behaviour. Since the precession of its perihelion was in conflict with Newtonian predictions, thus threatening the fundamental physics of the heliocentric theory, Einstein pulled out of his hat a fanciful theory which basically implies that we cannot trust our own eyes. We shall address this theory and the controversial ‘anomalous precession of Mercury’s perihelion’ in Chapter 22; for now, let us focus on the periodic motions of the Sun’s ‘junior moon’.
As it turns out, Mercury’s behaviour is not so erratic after all. Yes, its orbital plane is slightly inclined in relation to the Sun’s orbital plane, as viewed from Earth, causing its elevation vis-à-vis the Sun to oscillate quite a bit, yet it simply revolves around the Sun in lunar fashion. Its average synodic period is 116.88 days, which is approximately 4 times the period needed for our Moon to return facing the Sun, as viewed from Earth. As you may remember from Chapter 3, this same period (116.88 days) is precisely the time employed by Venus to revolve around its own axis.
All this would be considered an extraordinary coincidence under the Copernican model, according to which the orbital paths of Mercury, Venus and our Moon are completely unrelated. Conversely, within the geometric configuration of the TYCHOS model, and given the ostensibly ‘magnetic’ nature of our solar system, these seemingly uncanny orbital resonances between our Moon, Mercury and Venus are to be fully expected.
Now, is Mercury really tidally locked to the Sun, just as our Moon is tidally locked to Earth? Until around the year 1965, every astronomer in the world would have told you that, yes, Mercury is indeed tidally locked to the Sun. In that year, though, NASA and Soviet space agency officials gleefully announced that, according to modern radar data, Mercury was not, after all, tidally locked to the Sun. This caused an uproar in the astronomy community and the question has still not been put to rest. However, when viewed under the TYCHOS model—which has Mercury revolving around the Earth and not the other way around—it becomes glaringly evident that both Mercury and Venus are tidally locked to their host, the Sun.
8.3 Mercury’s short and long empiric sidereal intervals (ESI)
Every 7 years, an earthly observer will see Mercury conjunct with a given star 6 times at intervals of ~358 days, followed by a conjunction after ~408 days. In other words, the 7th conjunction is delayed by about 50 days, meaning that, just like Mars, Mercury has two empiric sidereal intervals: a ‘short ESI’ and a ‘long ESI’.
For the sake of calculation, over a period of 14 years Mercury completes 12 short ESIs (~358 days) and two long ESIs (~408 days). Table 8.1 shows a series of 14 successive sidereal periods of Mercury, from 6 July 1998 to 5 July 2012, compiled by perusing the Neave online planetarium. The chart counts Mercury’s yearly revolutions using as starting point its conjunction with the star Asellus Australis in the Cancer constellation, at the beginning of a long ESI.
Table 8.1 Series of 14 successive sidereal periods of Mercury:
The 14 successive sidereal periods of Mercury shown in Table 8.1 total 5113 days. Thus, the average sidereal period of Mercury is ~365.22 days (5113/14), or almost exactly 1 solar year.
What is empirically observed is a 7-year pattern, yielding a mean sidereal period of 365.22 days. Provided the right starting point is used to calculate Mercury’s celestial motions, Mercury is indeed seen to be tidally locked to the Sun in its yearly orbit around Earth. This is the behaviour one would expect from a moon.
It is truly perplexing that, as far as I know, no one has noticed the fact that Mercury’s sidereal periods, in spite of their irregularity, can be averaged out to almost exactly 1 solar year. To be sure, this ‘synchronicity’ finds no support in the heliocentric model, which has the Earth and Mercury revolving at different speeds and in different ‘lanes’ around the Sun.
Most astronomy tables give Mercury’s mean synodic period as 115.88 days (a synodic period is the time interval between two successive conjunctions of any given celestial body with the Sun). So why is the period obtained with the TYCHOS model (116.88 days) slightly longer? To answer this question, let us look at a duly verified series of 14 successive synodic periods of Mercury, spanning 1636 days.
Table 8.2 Series of 14 successive synodic periods of Mercury.
The 14 successive sidereal periods of Mercury shown in Table 8.2 total 1636 days. Thus, the average sidereal period of Mercury is ~116.86 days (1636/14). Hence, our 116.88-day value for Mercury’s true mean synodic period is virtually on the mark.
8.4 Venus: the Sun’s 'senior moon'
It has been observed that Venus presents practically the same face to earthly observers each time it transits closest to Earth, which happens every 584.4 days or so. Note that Venus is, of all our surrounding celestial bodies, the one that passes closest to Earth.
As it is, this apparent tidal locking of Venus to Earth remains a complete mystery to modern astronomers. Of course, in the Copernican model, Earth and Venus are pictured as traveling around in concentric orbits, with Venus requiring less time to complete a lap due to the smaller orbit, yet Venus always shows the same face to us during the so-called ‘inferior conjunction with the Sun’. This is yet another instance of puzzling ‘synchronicity’ for the advocates of the heliocentric theory. In fact, astronomers readily admit they have no explanation for this ‘mystery’:
“The periods of Venus’ rotation and of its orbit are synchronized such that it always presents the same face toward Earth when the two planets are at their closest approach. Whether this is a resonance effect or merely a coincidence is not known.” "Venus facts" - Nineplanets.org (opens in a new tab)
“Every 584 days, Venus and Earth come to their point of closest approach. And every time this happens, Venus shows Earth the same face. Is there some force that makes Venus align itself with the Earth rather than the Sun, or is this just a coincidence?” "Meet the Neighbours" - ABC Science/the Lab (2017) (opens in a new tab)
“Whether this relationship arose by chance or is the result of some kind of tidal locking with Earth is unknown.” “Tidal locking” - Wikipedia (opens in a new tab)
“Tidal locking of Venus planet: (...) so that the Venus planet shows always almost the same face to the Earth planet during each meeting, and shows that same face to both Earth and Sun during heliocentric opposition of Earth and Venus planets.” "Orbital resonance and Solar cycles" (opens in a new tab) by P.A. Semi (March 2009)
Every astronomer is aware of this ‘inconvenient’ fact, but who can explain it? As with so many other long-standing enigmas, the TYCHOS model provides a satisfactory and rational answer: Venus, just like Mercury, is tidally locked to its host, the Sun, quite simply because it is a lunar satellite, much like our Moon is tidally locked to Earth. But let us do the math:
Venus employs 584.4 days to to return to perigee. This is slightly more than 1½ solar years.
365.25 x 1.5 = 547.875 days
The difference: 584.4 - 547.875 = 36.525 days
36.525 days corresponds to 1/10 of 365.25 days and 1/16 of 584.4 days.
In fact, for every 16 solar revolutions around Earth, Venus transits 10 times behind the Sun (apogee). Every 8 years, Venus transits 5 times closest to Earth (perigee). Every 16 years, Venus conjuncts with Mars at diametrically opposite sides of Earth, and every 32 years or so Venus and Mars re-conjunct on the same side of Earth. The TYCHOS model is shining a light on a fact the Copernican model has obscured for centuries, namely that the entire system is composed of magnetically interlocked micro-systems in perfect synchrony.
Venus has an 8-year cycle of 2922 days, or 5 synodic periods of 584.4 days (~1.6 years).
365.25 x 8 = 2922 days
584.4 x 5 = 2922 days
This period of 2922 days equals 100 TMSPs. The TMSP is our Moon’s true mean synodic period of 29.22 days. This will be duly explicated in Chapter 13.
8.5 Verifying the 584.4-day value for Venus’ synodic period
Some may hold up that official astronomy tables give Venus’ mean synodic period as 583.9 days, not 584.4 days, but life teaches that ‘official’ and ‘true’ are not necessarily synonymous. As we shall see, the official figure is easily challenged by averaging the five synodic periods of Venus’ 8-year cycle of solar conjunction.
Table 8.3 clearly shows that the mean synodic period of Venus is ~584.4 days. Note that synodic periods fluctuate slightly over time due to eccentricity, and that all planetary and lunar orbits are slightly eccentric (i.e., off-center) in relation to their host body. ‘Eccentric’ should not be confused with ‘elliptical’: the elliptical orbits proposed by Kepler do not exist in the TYCHOS model or, I suspect, anywhere in the physical universe.
Table 8.3 Series of 5 successive synodic periods of Venus
5 successive synodic periods of Venus total 2922 days, or 365.25 x 8
The average length of Venus’ synodic period is 2922 / 5 = 584.4 days
The TYCHOS model’s 584.4-day value for the mean synodic period of Venus is empirically observed and therefore beyond dispute.
As current theory has it, Venus rotates clockwise around its own axis. This, however, is an unproven claim (much like the recent claim that Mercury is not tidally locked) apparently originating from purported radar surveys performed back in the 1960s. Lengthy debates on this issue can be found in the astronomy literature, yet no Copernican astronomer has been able to settle the matter.
The reason why heliocentrists reckon that Venus rotates in clockwise or ‘retrograde’ fashion is, in all likelihood, an illusion caused by the heliocentric perspective: since Venus employs more than one year (more precisely, 1.6 solar years) to return to perigee, and since heliocentrists erroneously believe the Earth revolves around Venus during this same period, their analysis of Venus’ rotational direction is faulty.
8.6 The retrograde motions of Mercury and Venus
The fact that our planets appear to periodically come to a halt and start moving ‘backwards’ for a few weeks or months and then resume their ‘forward’ (prograde) movement has mystified astronomers over the ages. It certainly is the most striking phenomenon affecting our planets’ motions, as viewed from Earth. To be sure, and contrary to popular belief, these irregular retrograde motions have never been accounted for by Copernican astronomers in a satisfactory or even plausible manner, as we had the opportunity to demonstrate in Chapter 5.
"The ancients never believed that the planets actually halted in space and traveled backward for a while; they assumed there was a mechanism by which the motion appeared retrograde from our vantage point. They also believed in the Aristotelian ideal that planets move with constant speed in circular orbits. Therein lay the seemingly insurmountable challenge to astronomical model-makers: how to account for a planet’s observed irregular movements without violating the Aristotelian principle of circular motion at constant speed. That these model-makers nearly succeeded is a testament to their ingenuity." "Parallax: the Race to Measure the Cosmos" - by Alan W. Hirshfeld (2001) (opens in a new tab)
The retrograde behaviour of the Sun’s two moons, Venus and Mercury, is similar to that of Mars. When viewed in the Tychosium 3D simulator, they both produce teardrop-shaped loops as they transit in inferior conjunction with the Sun. It is a perfectly natural, dynamic geometric pattern known in geometry as an epitrochoid, yet one that the human mind understandably finds it difficult to process. The illustration in Fig. 8.1 should help visualize how these ‘teardrop loops’ are formed.
Fig. 8.1
Heliocentrists see retrograde motions as a mere illusion of perspective, but these apparent ‘backward’ motions, as observed from Earth, are part and parcel of the actual physical paths traced by the celestial bodies of our system. In Figure 8.1, the cowboy’s torch will leave a teardrop-shaped smoke plume because the torch actually swirls around that patch of sky. When viewed from our central point of reference (the Earth), it will appear as if the swirling torch periodically reverses direction, but of course this isn’t the case: the ‘teardrop loop’ is simply a combination of the horse’s forward motion with the lasso’s circular motion. Figure 8.2 shows the retrograde period of each of the Sun’s two moons:
Fig. 8.2 Screenshot from the Tychosium 3D simulator.
Mean retrograde period of Mercury: ~22.828 days, or 1/16 of a solar year.
Mean retrograde period of Venus: ~45.656 days, or 1/8 of a solar year.
During these retrograde periods, we see Mercury and Venus moving in the opposite direction of the Sun. Thereafter, they resume their ‘prograde’ motion, moving from west to east against the starry background along with the Sun (of course, we always perceive the Sun as moving from east to west due to Earth’s daily west-to-east axial rotation).
Mean prograde period of Mercury: ~94 days.
Mean prograde period of Venus: ~538.7 days.
During these much longer prograde periods, Mercury and Venus are seen from Earth as moving in the same direction as the Sun. In actuality, the two solar moons are not visible from Earth whenever they transit behind the Sun.
Note that there is nothing elliptical about the motions of Venus and Mercury. They both revolve around the Sun in uniformly circular paths and at constant speeds, even though their orbital axes are slightly ‘eccentric’ (off-center) in relation to their host, the Sun.
In the next chapter, I shall provide conclusive evidence that Venus and Mercury are the moons of the Sun by demonstrating that their orbits are inclined along the Sun’s ‘mysterious’ axial tilt of 6 or 7 degrees. Venus and Mercury are therefore not just the only ‘Keplerian planets’ of our system with no moons of their own, they are also the only bodies whose orbits are coplanar with the Sun’s equatorial ecliptic.