Happy 2010th rotation around the sun since Christ!

[PatriotResistance]

Thank you, Steve, I think. My head is still buzzing! LOL

I'm sure it's quite clear in your mind, but it's WAY more than I wanted and quite un-clear, though it's probably what I NEED to answer my question.

What I'm really interested in is the relationship of our solar system to the galactic center. I understand we are out near the edge somewhere. Perhaps you answered this, but I didn't follow. The earth's orbit is tilted a little from the galactic? But regardless it's not 90 degrees off so once every year a line from the sun through the earth would point at the galactic center (looking down in plan view). I'm wondering what that date is right now. (Obviously as the solar system rotates around the galactic center the date changes)

[Maximus]

Here is a site with an explanation and graphics that may help:

http://www.alignment2012.com/whatisGA.htm

[dollardoctrinaire]

New years encourages too much collectivism IMHO. I would support the freedom of people to celebrate it, but would never participate in the so-called "celebrations" myself. It is also associated with a heck of a lot of mysticism in the form of Christmas preceding it. New years is definitely a little evil IMHO.

[PatriotResistance]

What was then March 25.... which would now be April 7 (the difference between Julian and Gregorian calendars has been 13 days since 1900).

Steve and Maximus, much thanks!

Don't why I find this fascinating, but I do.

Interesting that the Mayans had more awareness of their actual place in the universe than my great-ancestors.

I'm going to start celebrating April 7 as 'Galactic Center Day'. Might even light a few firecrackers or howl at the moon. ;-)

How long until it changes to April 8? (or 6??)

Bob

[D'kian]

What was then March 25.... which would now be April 7 (the difference between Julian and Gregorian calendars has been 13 days since 1900).

So the last seven days of March were in a different year? Just thinking about it surely is giving my accountant a headache

[Steve D'Ippolito]

Huh?

First off, I have to apologize. I had no idea this tied into that Mayan 2012 bullshit and that said bullshit included raving about the winter solstice pointing through the galactic center, and I failed to realize you truly were interested in the galactic center as such.

I did a tiny bit of research after looking at what Maximus linked to (which seems to be pushing some sort of astrological mysticism, BTW).

The galactic center is at the coordinates : RA 17h45m40.04s, Dec -29° 00' 28.1". The Declination is how far off the celestial equator it is, and you'll note it's -29. The sun as seen from earth follows a line is NEVER more than 23 and a fraction degrees off today's celestial equator--remember the plane of the zodiac does not move. Thus, the solstice will NEVER align with the center of the galaxy, though it could get within six degrees (and apparently is that close now). The zodiac and the plane of the Milky Way galaxy do cross at two points, and the solstice happens at present to be very near one of those intersections. So what? (To be fair, Maximus's link does not claim that the solstice lines up with the center of the galaxy, but only the galactic equator. It seems to ascribe some mystical significance to that fact though.)

Maximus's link in turn links to this: http://www.lunarplanner.com/HCmovies/HCmovie300Frame.html . Although this looks like at least part mysticism (ascribing mystical significance to alignments) the movie at the top of the page actually illustrates the 25,000 year precession fairly well. Take a look at it *without* hitting play, for a moment (or pause and back it up to the beginning if it loaded playing).

The blue disk is the plane of the earth's orbit around the sun (the zodiac)--the symbols around the outside are the traditional (astrological) symbols of the constellations of the zodiac--consider them a fixed reference. The green plane is the plane of the earth's equator, and hence the celestial equator as well. The red plane is the plane of the galaxy. You'll see that at the moment, the highest and lowest parts of the green plane slice through the red plane. (That's the winter and summer solstices, almost lying on the plane of the galaxy.)

Start the movie playing and you'll see the earth's pole move in a circle... and the green plane moves with it. This goes through a full cycle once every 25,000 years. Even though the whole image rotates (why did they do that? it only makes it more confusing), you can see that the line where the blue (plane of the earth's orbit or zodiac) and green intersect is rotating with respect to the symbols on the perimeter and the red disk (which should be considered as fixed in space--like I said, by having the whole thing rotate they make it more confusing). That line of intersection is where the sun appears to be on the first day of spring or fall.

March 25 or April 7 *never* had anything to do with the galactic center. Which happens to be in Sagittarius somewhere--and the sun appears to be in Sagitarius in December, presently. Our calendar NEVER was with reference to the galactic center, it was devised over a thousand years before we knew what a galaxy actually is.

You asked as part of your question whether the alignment of earth-sun on December 31st moved, and it does and I told you. It has NOTHING whatsoever to do with the center of the galaxy, nor does any other calendar date. Our calendar tracks our seasons. Any alignment with the center of the galaxy is pure coincidence, the weird mysticism alluded to on Maximus's site not withstanding--and it surely does not happen on March 25th!

You can actually *see* the plane of the galaxy (if you get away from large cities) at night. There will be a band of cloudiness running from horizon to horizon known as the Milky Way, it's actually pretty well skewed to the celestial equator and the zodiac. (The ancients ascribed it to milk being squeezed from Galatea's breast IIRC) It wasn't until Galileo in the early 1600s that it became evident that that cloudiness was the sum of lots of stars, too far away to be visible without a telescope, and it wasn't until less than a century ago that we realized there were other galaxies. (NB: The Maya could have realized that winter solstice would end up on the "milky way" at some point--but could not possibly have understood what a galaxy was, or that the part of the milky way *in* Sagittarius is the center of this galaxy.)

By the way the difference between March 25 and April 7th that I alluded to is because of an error in the old roman calendar (now corrected), where the leap days came too frequently and caused it to slip out of sync with the seasons, and has nothing to do with the precession of the equinoxes which I was describing. (Look up "Julian Calendar" and "Gregorian Calendar" for explanations.)

[D'kian]

You can actually *see* the plane of the galaxy (if you get away from large cities) at night. There will be a band of cloudiness running from horizon to horizon known as the Milky Way, it's actually pretty well skewed to the celestial equator and the zodiac. (The ancients ascribed it to milk being squeezed from Galatea's breast IIRC) It wasn't until Galileo in the early 1600s that it became evident that that cloudiness was the sum of lots of stars, too far away to be visible without a telescope, and it wasn't until less than a century ago that we realized there were other galaxies.

Indeed. Less than a hundred years ago, in fact, no one knew there were things outside of the Galaxy. It was in the 1920s that Edwin Hubble was able to measure the distance to the Andromeda nebula, and to resolve a few individual stars within it, that the existence of other galaxies was discovered. The discoveries are related, as Hubble used cepheid variable stars in order to measure the distance to Andromeda.

In fact, while the Milky way was known to be a galaxy for some time, it took centuries to even determine where the Solar System lay in relation to the galactic center. For a long time astronomers thought we were at or very near the center (not unreasonable if you've seen the Milky Way at night).

So there's no way any of the ancients, who were very good at naked-eye astronomy, would have taken into account things, such as galaxies, which they didn't know about.

When you think about it, many ancient cultures excelled at astronomy, considering the primitive nature of the tools they had available, and even of the math and the number systems they used. Within such limitations they managed to discover a great deal and to implement accurate calendars. That's impressive enough, and there's no need to abscribe the impossible to them.

[Black Wolf]

I say we make the first day the birth of Pythagoras

[Black Wolf]

If Zip's plan of New Atlantis ever comes to fruition, that should be "year 0".

"The year someone REALLY parted the Red Sea."

Or whatever body of water that is outside of any EEZ that would be available

Edited February 23, 2011 by Black Wolf