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Or could it be something a whole heck of a lot more frightening!!!!
Originally posted by RjKon
reply to post by littlebunny
I'ma bit lost.. what?
Originally posted by chrisd250
reply to post by Chadwickus
i also don't see what the big deal is. the planets align toward the milky way every december, nothing happens....
Originally posted by chrisd250
reply to post by littlebunny
i have and honestly i think they were just very good at observing the skies(probably thanks to having nothing else to occupy the mind like us ie:internet forums, phones, tv ect...) and treated celestial events such as a galactic alignment as a religious holiday of sorts. and since all of those civilizations were also bored all across the world, they were all studying the sky and developed religions associated with the stars and planets they had been observing their whole lives. wouldnt we do the same in the same position with less knowledge of our world and universe than we have recently?
Originally posted by Seventhdoor
I don't believe in doomsday prophecies, however I sat there with Stellarium, and double checked using a program called Starcalc. What is amazing about this particular day (sunrise of 12/12/12) is the way in which the planets rise above the horizon (in my opinion).
I went back 5000 years (yes it was boring) and saw no event which paralleled this. What I'm seeing (if i get what the OP is trying to show us) is that the Three Pyramids are largest to smallest, right?
Saturn rises first, followed by Venus, then Mercury. Largest to smallest. Furthermore this is followed by the Moon and then the Sun, in an almost straight line above the horizon.
We must remember that the ancients viewed the planets as intelligences, they would have seen any event like this as significant, all planets rising in a line.
To what end, I can't say, but it is very unique and not something that happens every year, you can check this yourself by just going forward and backwards a few hundred years. Last year, and next year, Venus rises after the Sun, and the moon is not part of this procession of planets.
Axial precession (precession of the equinoxes)
Main article: Axial precession (astronomy)
Precessional movement.Axial precession is the movement of the rotational axis of an astronomical body, whereby the axis slowly traces out a cone. In the case of the Earth, this type of precession is also known as the precession of the equinoxes or precession of the equator. The Earth goes through one such complete precessional cycle in a period of approximately 25,800 years, during which the positions of stars as measured in the equatorial coordinate system will slowly change; the change is actually due to the change of the coordinates. Over this cycle the Earth's north axial pole moves from where it is now, within 1° of Polaris, in a circle around the ecliptic pole, with an angular radius of about 23.5 degrees (or approximately 23 degrees 27 arcminutes [2]). The shift is 1 degree in 72 years, where the angle is taken from the observer, not from the center of the circle.
Discovery of the precession of the equinoxes is generally attributed to the ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchus (ca. 150 B.C.), though the difference between the sidereal and tropical years (the precession equivalent) was known to Aristarchus of Samos much earlier (ca. 280 B.C.). According to recent studies on the history of the Mayans, it is believed that Mayans knew about the precession of the equinoxes. It was later explained by Newtonian physics. The Earth has a nonspherical shape, being oblate spheroid, bulging outward at the equator.