Extracted text
Editorial transcription, lightly normalized from the scan. Line-break hyphenation, spacing, capitalization, and unmistakable OCR errors have been repaired; the claims remain those of The Flaming Sword.
"There is a question I am confronted with when conversing about the stars above us, and I cannot explain it to any one when they point it out. But no doubt you will understand. Why does the Southern Cross constellation show always from here [New Zealand] if, as I understand your teachings, it is fixed on a sphere above our surface? Should it not be hidden periodically as the sphere rotates? Again, I am asked, if the stars and planets cross our sky from east to west by the rotation of the sphere containing them, as I understand, and they pass out of sight, taking an upward course on the other side of the sphere, and then downward to the east and come in sight again—why does not the constellation of the Southern Cross do the same?"
The conception that rays of light in universal space are propagated in straight lines, is absolutely essential to the conclusions of modern astronomy. "If they were not so," remarked Astronomer Airy, of Greenwich, "here would end all our astronomy." But the rectilinear propagation of light is an assumption, a guess that has never passed beyond the stage of its first condition of conception.
According to Koreshan Astronomy, the open space of the physical cosmos constitutes the earth's hollow; and the oceans of air are emplaced according to their specific gravity in the form of spheres, and hence they are called atmospheres. The natural propagation of light through the medium of an atmosphere, is necessarily in curves. Koreshan Astronomy has demonstrated conclusively the principle of the curvilinear propagation of light.
All of the factors of the curvilinear propagation of light and vision, and perspective and geolinear foreshortening, conspire to produce the apparent relations of the earth and sky. The earth is concave, but it has the appearance of convexity. The heavens are convex to us, but they have the appearance of a concavity. We are near the earth, and the earth-lines in every direction rapidly foreshorten, apparently drawing the surface in extense down toward us. We are farther from the heavens; and vastly more surface of the sky is exposed to our view from horizon to horizon, than of the earth.
In fact, about one half of the heavens is exposed to the view of the observer, no matter in what part of the earth he may be.
A simple explanation of the dome appearance of the sky is that the "relief" of the sphere of the heavens is reversed, by factors analogous to those operative in the pseudoscope. From a given meridian, our view may extend from sunrise to sunset. When the sun is rising apparently, it is coming down into the border of our hemisphere of vision; when setting, it is leaving our field of view, actually going upward and outward in the space of the earth's hollow.
But the horizons of sunrise and sunset are coincidental with the eastern and western horizons of the earth. Therefore, it is apparent that the entire circle of the limit of our vision of the heavens is drawn down to the earth's horizon; for at the circle of the horizon our farthest views of the sky meet our farthest views of the surface of the earth.
The field of vision of the sky extends about 90° in every direction from the observer. Therefore, our field of view of the sky extends far beyond what might be supposed by one conceiving that rays of light and vision extend in straight lines. If we may see the sun in the west on the horizon, 90° from our point of observation, we may perceive stars in every direction 90° from the zenith of our position on the earth. For that reason the Southern Cross, as seen from New Zealand, the home of our correspondent, is always visible above the horizon. Its circumpolar revolution is analogous to that of the Great Dipper in the north.
Every circumpolar star has two diurnal culminations, one called the superior culmination, and the other the inferior culmination. The superior culmination is the principal culmination because it is on the meridian between us and the pole star. The inferior culmination is on the meridian directly opposite the pole star from the view point of the observer. Therefore at the superior culmination the star is moving westward, whether the star is in the north or south; and at the inferior culmination the star is moving from west to east.
Now if the students of Astronomy will exercise a little ingenuity, conceiving that as the stars move in their circumpolar paths, either in the north or in the south, the entire portions of the heavens which extend upward and outward are apparently drawn down in the form of a dome—the order of their real motions may seem to be in harmony with their apparent motions.
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The source scans remain the record. This page preserves the periodical's argument and reported observations without presenting its conclusions as independently established results. The claims remain attributed to The Flaming Sword.
The Flaming Sword · Vol. 20, No. 2 · 19 Jun 1906 · PDF p. 12