I questioned the distance to the moon when I found its rise/set times could be used as tangents on a circle. This then led to the discovery that the Northern and Southern hemispheres have differing rise/set times on the same days.

I also saw the moon could not form an orbit around Earth. One moon cycle is 27.32 days long. Current astronomy depicts the phases of the moon at four positions around Earth, but that is a false representation. For it ‘to work’ you would have to be looking from a vantage that stacked 27.32 Earths on top of each other.

The distance Earth would travel in that time would look like a tube. So it is not Earth the moon orbits, but Earths path around the Sun.

This then showed the moon does not have axial rotation. It’s path acts like a ribbon around a pole, the same side always facing the pole.

If my interpretation of the data is correct, many claims will have to be revisited. 

Perhaps the most significant information I found researching this project was the lack of scientific proof of the distance to the moon and sun. 

For example, the Astronomical Societies agreed by consensus the distance to the sun in 1864 .

This was after the speed of light had been determined 200 years earlier based on the sun’ s distance being 93,000000 miles. 

Experiments have been done, but always one or other piece of data is used as fact to verify the experiment. Either the distance to the sun or the speed of light. This could be described as circular reasoning. 

My interest in The history of Astronomy helped me find two crucial pieces of data that has led to this discovery. 

The first dates back to 1864 when astronomers agreed on the 147 million km (91 m.miles) as the sun’s distance from Earth .

Just over 200 hundred years earlier Danish astronomer Ule Romer had measured the speed of light using the roughly 93 million mile distance to the sun in his experiment. Prior to 1675 the only evidence for this distance is 270BC, with Aristarchus and 130BC, Hipparchus.

Then the second piece of data came from trying to find the cause of the moon’s motion.

This is where I found the evidence hidden in plain sight.

I have used the old-fashioned method of ratios to make my calculations, but the data is from current ephemerides, therefore anyone can see if this is correct.

Here is why I find the moon’s distance to be just over 1,862 miles away. 

Is the moon closer to Earth than current belief?

Empirical evidence would suggest this. 

I am working on the premise that the sighting of a stellar object on the horizon can be described as a tangent on a circle.

Then the rising and setting of the moon can be two tangents. Where they intersect would give the distance to the moon.

Taking the least number of hours above the horizon would give the nearest distance. 

I found every lunar cycle the moon is as little as 7 hours 14 minutes above the horizon at Stanley, Falkland Islands, which is – 51° N Latitude. On those days it is visible at Greenwich, England (51° N. Lat) for over 17 hours. In the same cycle this process reverses, being visible at Stanley, Falkland Islands for over 17 hours, but only above the horizon at Greenwich, England for 7:17 hours. This occurs every month so it is easy to verify.

moonrise/moonset table source http://www.timeanddate.com

The tangents give the distance, keeping in mind the circumference of Earth at 51° N or – 51° N latitudes would be smaller than the equatorial circumference. (See diagram 1)

My calculations show the moon to be 1862.6355 miles from Earth. This would be the sublunar point, not the length of the line of sight (see diagram 2).

The other piece of evidence to support this is the moon’s visibility across Earth at any given time.

Any light source at a distance greater than 3 1/2 times diameter of the sphere would be visible across 180°. That means half the globe would be lit by that light, as happens with our sun. But the  moon is never visible across half our planet at the same time. This means it would have to be closer than 27,741 miles which is 3.5 times Earth’s diameter. This figure is very different  from the current data saying it is 238,906 miles (384,400km) away.

Another belief that can’t be explained with empirical data is that the moon orbits Earth. 

The phases of the moon are cited as proof . Yet the Earth is not stationary. Earth would have made roughly 1- twelfth of its journey around the sun when the moon completed one cycle around Earth. New moon to new moon or full moon to full moon, to simplify the picture. In this time Earth has moved 27.32 days (sidereal-time of lunar cycle). If this length in space is seen as a tube then it can be seen our moon spirals around the Earths path, not the Earth itself. Seen from a point outside the Earth-moon system, the fact that in each cycle it is both over the northern hemisphere and then the southern hemisphere could only occur if it spiralled round the Earth path. (See diagram 3)

If the interpretation of the data is correct, then the moon is about 1863 miles from Earth so it must be only 16 miles in diameter, being apparently 0°.5 across.

The moon’s orbit does not circle Earth, but spirals around the Earth path around the sun. It does not have axial rotation. (refer to diagram 3)

Axial rotation is the motion of a body that progresses in a given direction whereby a given point on that circumference first travels toward the direction of motion, then retreats and then circles back to that direction, as our planet does round the sun.

Since the same side of the moon always faces Earth, it suggests a spiral like a ribbon round a pole.

I have applied the basic rule of Science in analysing the data I collected. Mainly, that the evidence is empirical and that anyone can verify it.

I have presented this in the simplest form, so anyone can understand it. Like myself, one would not need to be a physicist or mathematician to be able to follow the method I used. 

This proposal asks more questions than it answers.

For example; The distance to the sun and planets. Their sizes. The speed of light and size of the universe. But, to me the most important one is the methods used in education where critical thinking has been sidelined. Why? 

It brings to mind one of my favourite quotes by Mark Twain. “There is something fascinating about Science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact” – Life on the Mississippi