Are all of the astronomy facts accurate in these videos?

Question

I mean, what he says about the position of the sun and the stars during the solstice and equinox, and what an Age is, and all the other scientific stuff. Not the religious stuff, but the stuff he is claiming as astrological fact. Does he have that part correct?

I greatly appreciate any help I can get on this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjGkRFFBd0A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_E0vfP79yE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyXIeB1qI6w

boywholikekittens: do you know a lot about astronomy? I do not. Can you help? Does the sun appear to be a the most southern point on Dec 22 and start to rise again on Dec 25. Do the three bright stars in Orion's Belt and the Eastern Star line up and point to were the sun will rise on Dec 25? Is all that true?

Thanks boywholikeskittens.

Answer 1

www.badastronomy.com

Answer 2

No, the astronomy is basically bullshit.

The winter solstice is on December 21, not December 22, and its northward motion thereafter was detectable immediately. The astronomers of the day didn't have to wait three days. I don't know about the peasant folk.

Sirius is *always* lined up with Orion's belt, not just on some particular day.

The business of Sirius and orion's belt pointing to the sunrise on December 25 is complete bullshit. The Sun is nowhere near there on December 25. In fact, Sirius and Orion are evening stars, not morning stars on that day.

The Sun is never near Crux, EVER.

I'm not going to bother watching the other videos for you. Jesus is similar to other gods because his mythology borrows from the others, not because of any (or at least this particular) astrological bullshit.

You can always be sure that astrology (and religion, for that matter) is bullshit.

Answer 3

Ms America, I watched only the first video and from that, I can say that it is a mixture of facts and fantasy. Don't pay too much attention to it. From Von Danicken (UFO visiting us in the past) to Holy Blood - Holy Grail (the inspiration of Da Vinci Code) people have dug the past in search of conspiracy theories or simply scams. It is true that there is similarities between the New Testament and other religions and believes. As a matter of fact, the Emperor Augustus had the title of "God's son who came to earth to save us."
But much of the rest is fiction. Consider this:
The circle is divided in 360 degrees because the Babylonians believed it the the sun's right ascension for one day, thus believing that the year had 360 days instead of 365.25. Any date reference from the past is inaccurate. Even the heads of different Churches admit that Christmas' date has nothing to do with Jesus' birth. Nobody knows and never will.
The winter solstice is the 21st, 22nd and, I think, even the 23rd, depending of the leap year.
One big mistake made in the movie is the reference to the Southern Cross. That constellation cannot be seen from the northern hemisphere and no one had been in the southern one and returned in those days. It's pure fantasy from the author of the video and if it came to MythBusters, it would get the 'busted!' label. :-)
PS: Nice video animation, though!

Answer 4

correct information about astronomy is most often found on sites that are NOT youtube..... such as space.com or spaceweather.com or any sites that are .edu, .gov or .org.... look to NASA sites, Hubble sites, SOHO sites..... do a little research if you're really interested in knowing!!.....facts, that is.... the gobbletygoo you get on youtube is 'sensational' and usually wrong............search engines like Yahoo and GOOGLE will send you to sites where you can compare info and decide if they all agree and then you'll have pretty reliable facts.....

Answer 5

the stuff about the solstice is, not sure about the stars