Why do Flat Earth enthusiasts respond like this when I offer to provide a demonstration?

Sometimes in various places when a Flat Earther asserts their world view, I jump-in and give my perspective on the matter.

Speaking of perspective? Does it matter if I tell them (or you) that I'm amateur astrophotography (emphasis on amateur)? I really don't like appeals to authority. I remember nearly two years ago I said something like that in regard to climate change and a person goes "do you go to a doctor... well that's an appeal to authority you dummy." So yeah, there's that but I'd like to think that my angle adds something tangible and gives people who don't know something new to learn about.

Before I got into astrophotography, I was also fascinated by the whole Flat Earth thing. Like, why? That's was mainly it for me... why do people buy into this? I figured that it could be a combination of our failed educational system, lack of trust in the media (can't blame anyone for feeling that way), and a general bias for one's own empirical observations.

I remember 3-4 years ago I mentioned FE to my friend and her boyfriend and he was like "but have your ever gone into space before and seen it yourself?" It's an interesting thought-experiment but I was still incredulous that he wasn't just conceding that the Earth is definitely round (spherical). In retrospect, I think my incredulity was due to my inability to counter with any of my own observations. Just because I am more than reasonably confident in established science on the matter, I can't say that I've "seen" it with my own eyes.

 

Fast-forward to 2020:

I bought my first real telescope in late 2018. Throughout 2019 and 2020 I learned all kinds of shit. During that first winter I had a lawn chair and piece of plywood while I saved-up for a proper astronomical mount. Without the clock-drive or motorized tracking, objects would move across my field of view. I'd aim at the Saturn, and would have to manually turn the scope in order to keep it somewhat centered.

When I finally bought the Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro mount in early 2019, I was put on track to learn about polar alignment. For that first month, I didn't "get it". I knew that the instructions said you needed to do "polar alignment" and that the center of the mount had a little "polar finder" or "polar scope" straight up the middle.

Here is a IMGUR gallery with explanations: Polar Alignment for non-astronomers

Whenever I see a comment on YouTube about Flat Earth, I offer to make a video demonstration of me performing polar alignment on my EQ mount. In such a video I would demonstrate how polar alignment effects what you see through an eyepiece and what a camera sees at various settings.

 

tl;dr:

So far, whenever I offer to make a demo video about Polar alignment, I either get no response or the person responds to me with a long comment. In the latter scenario the long comment doesn't usually deal with polar alignment. The "best" response I got from someone was when we went back and forth (cordially) at length. When I pressed the person on all that I presented above (in text form, they never accepted my offer of a video) they responded with something like "you can't see Polaris from Australia because it's too far."

 

So yeah, if anyone is interested, I will update the IMGUR gallery and perhaps even whip-up a video if there is interest. I'm really lazy and good at procrastinating, so I haven't gotten around to proactively making the vid but I Did record part of it during my pursuit of astrophotography. I also recently put my new PC together and have been practicing using my microphone so I'm better-prepared than I Was weeks ago to make such a vid.

For me, the experience of learning about polar alignment, how to do it and innately understanding why it works the way it does has bolstered my confidence in the globe model. On the other hand, I'm not gonna touch Apollo with a 5-foot pole (at this time) but I am very confident in my opinion that the Earth is indeed round (spherical, an oblate-spheroid.. whatever... I'm not here to play semantic word games with Neil Degrasse Tysen in pop-sci videos, whom I have my own issues with in regard to his answer on JRE about flying cars ).

Bottom line: If I don't polar align my EQ mount, I can track objects -- keep them centered with the help of the RA/Right-Ascension motor, but the objects will drift diagonally. When Polar alignment is done correctly, the more accurate it is, the more likely something will stay in the center of the frame for longer without any corrections (although I do use "auto-guiding" to compensate).

Accurate polar alignment becomes more important with more magnification (narrow FOV). For example, my Celestron C8 is very unforgiving while my Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED and TPO180 are less-demanding about having "perfect" polar alignment.

submitted by /u/djronnieg
[link] [comments]

source https://www.reddit.com/r/C_S_T/comments/ovfp3e/why_do_flat_earth_enthusiasts_respond_like_this/