>It's not at all clear to me what this statements means, even
>observationally, leaving aside Cosmologically. Are are you saying that
>the Sky always looks the same from any given location (which is infinite
>parallax), or that they vary in some Mysteriously Unstated way.
Ok. I happen to believe in a model of "crystal spheres" which carry the various stellar objects. One of these spheres carries the ordinary stars, with Pole Star in (or near) the perforated centre, and most of the other constellations at fixed distances from Pole Star. Since this is the most settled feature of the night sky, I tend to regard this sphere as _the_ sky dome. It is the sphere which turns black when Xentha arrives, and turns blue once Yelm is high enough in the sky. Anything on this sphere would have infinite parallax, IMO.
There are other spheres further inside - and probably outside - of this sphere. I don't know how many planetic spheres there are, guesses are between one per planet (including yet invisible ones) or similar phenomena to a small number shared by many planets and other special bodies (jumpers, Orlanth's Ring, Lost Rocks, Jugger). I guess it should be known whether Mastakos/Uleria is above or below Lightfore - this should be observable at least once per night, when Mastakos/Uleria overtakes Lightfore. Other conjunctions are less frequent, but generally every Sunpath planet visibly in the sky will have two to three conjunctions per night, one with Lightfore and one or two with Mastakos/Uleria.
The further inside one of these spheres gets, the greater the parallax effect may become. IMO it should take a skilled observer with good tools to find this out, though. Probably the worst case is the Red Moon, which can be seen in quite different parts of the sky viewed from outside of the Glowline. Passing through the Glowline, it rapidly changes position to its ancestral place in the sky (as shown on the old Copper Ledgers). (This has interesting consequences whenever a Temple of the Reaching Moon collapses, and the moon reappears somewhere else in the sky, appearing muczh larger, too.)
>Clearly, you can't be claiming that they have the parallax of objects 50
>(or 80) km away, if they always form a "perfect hemisphere".
It's like with the horizon - move these 50 to 80 kilometres, and it's still as far away as before.
>> The most interesting question is the location of items below the star/sky
>> dome, like the Red Moon (the lowest of the stellar bodies, unless you count
>> the Zenith), the planets, special phenomena (Orlanth's Ring, the Juggernaut)
>> and the sun.
>Apart from the Red Moon and Zenith, ought any of these to have any
>significant difference in their apparent distance from the Sky Dome?
IMO yes. At least the Yuthuppans will find it important which special body passes above or below which other one.
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