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I just had a thought, do you understand what a frame of reference means? Because that is critical to our discussion and to much of science. I have a suspicion that your frame of reference seems to be the sun and not the earth.

Yes, I understand what a frame of reference is. I also know that if I change my angle by 2.1 degrees, everything around me will also appear to change angle by 2.1 degrees as a result. But I also know that changing my angle doesn't actually move anything around me even though everything appears to move - and I'm smart enough to know that its apparent motion was due to my own motion, and that be sitting in a rocking chair won't cause a lag between the suns gravitational and optical position.

The suns actual position and gravitational position do line up. The apparent position doesn't though, it is off by 2.1 degrees like you indicated.

Let's just get to the bottom of this one thing for now:

How much angular separation is between Pluto's actual (and gravitational) position and its apparent optical position, for an observer on earth?

To save you time, here is the info you need to calculate it:

>Pluto's eccentric orbit takes it from 30AU to 49AU from the sun. For fun, let's use the 49AU this time. Furthermore, let's make it 6 o-clock with Pluto overheard, and the sun at 90 degrees from overhead (i.e. just coming up or going down.)

>49AU takes 6.8 hours.

>The earth rotates 102 degrees in 6.8 hours.

> pluto's orbital period is 248.09 years. That is 0.0009 degrees in 5.4 hours. I don't mind if you ignore this factor for this calculation.

So I ask you: How many degrees difference will be between Pluto's actual (and gravitational) position and its apparent position?

What about a heavenly body which is 12 light hours away from the earth?

There's no use in trying to figure out anything more complicated if we can't make sense of this simple geometry. Please answer these two questions!

Thanks,

-Jesse