> Ok. I happen to believe in a model of "crystal spheres" which carry the
> various stellar objects.
This is also the explanation that GRAY alludes to the Lunar Materialists favouring, BTW.
> One of these spheres carries the ordinary stars, with Pole Star in
> (or near) the perforated centre [...] I tend to regard this sphere
> as _the_ sky dome.
I should hope so too! These "crystal spheres" are just hypothetical mathematical entities, IMO, with no (independant) mythic force. Whereas anyone with a brain believes in the Sky Dome -- well, Orlanthi Everyone, at least. Great stuff if you're a Lunar New Age Hippy Mystic, of course.
> Anything on this sphere would have infinite parallax, IMO.
I presume yopu mean zero parallax (I'm forever cofusing those two cardinals, myself...) I'm coming to agree with this position myself.
> 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 [...]
I think the whole purpose of the CS idea is to account for motion, so necessarily each planet (apart from Lightfore) would have its own, each "special" constellation would have one, etc.
> 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.
Oddly enough, there are conceivable scenarios where this _doesn't_ happen every night, and possibly some where it never happens. But yeah, chances are that it does.
> 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.
I can imagine. Care to go for an order-of-magntude estimate of their various sizes?
> Passing through the Glowline, [the Red Moon] rapidly changes position to
> its ancestral place in the sky (as shown on the old Copper Ledgers).
Hrm. Don't you think it's always in the direction of Glamour, then, whether inside or outside? I thought it was only the "height" that was ostentatiously weird...
> (This has interesting consequences whenever a Temple of the Reaching
> Moon collapses, and the moon reappears somewhere else in the sky,
> appearing much larger, too.)
Really? Why larger?
> >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.
They will, but they can determine this from conjunctions, if they're exact enough for one body to eclipse another. Doesn't require that they have different parallaxes. It's perfectly possible to have a hierarchy of objects all at infinite, but different distances. (Mathematically this is strictly true, but in practice it just requires that it be "effectively infinite" -- as in, the distance to the shops is effectively infinite, 'cos I can't be bothered going that far right now.)
Slainte,
Alex.
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