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WHITECROW BORDERLAND
Mayan Astronomy
Note 12: The Zero Base-Day and the Dresden Codex Venus Table. 7/6/99
Maya astronomers during the Classic Period venerated various kinds of celestial objects and carefully monitored their regular motion through the sky. An obvious case in point, of course, is the planet Venus which completes a period in its synodic revolution, as it is seen from the surface of the earth and not as it would appear from the surface of the sun in its actual orbital interval, every 584 days on average. Since Maya astronomers did not used decimal fractions of days and relied solely on whole numbers in their astronomy, as far as anyone knows, they probably compensated for the variations in planetary orbits, which never occur in whole numbers of days because their orbits are not circles, by observing and recording the variable periods of the planets they could see over time. There is no direct evidence they did this, of course, but it seems reasonable to assume they did so because their calculations of planetary motion are far too accurate to have been developed solely from a concept of average values without a consistently applied observational record to support it.
Venus, in any event, shows a pattern of variation in its synodic period that regularly includes five variable intervals which range from the shortest at 580 days to the longest at 588 days. Taken in groups of five consecutive synodic periods, the average interval is always very close to 584 days. To illustrate the point in question here, a series of Venus synodic periods which occurred near the beginning of this century, starting with an inferior conjunction of the planet on July 3, 1916 and running forward to the same event in the planet's period on June 28, 1932, shows a sequence of ten periods of the planet in this order: 586, 580, 588, 581, 584; 587, 580, 588, 581, 584. Over relatively long periods of time this pattern of variable intervals for the planet's motion remains consistent and stable. Since conjunctions of the planet with the sun are effectively invisible to naked-eye observation, it is highly probably that the Mayas used a series of last and first days of visibility before and after Venus's conjunction with the sun to establish a series of variable periods. The strongest evidence we have for the possibility the Mayas perceived Venus's motion in this kind of structure can be taken from the fact that the Dresden Codex Venus Table is arranged in such a way as to recapitulate groups of five synodic periods and/or eight solar year sequences, since 5 X 584 = 8 X 365 = 2,920 days, which is the same as the system employed above to establish the sequence of variables in the planet's motion.
A significant issue that has been raised in this document is whether Classic Period Maya astronomers privileged Venus's position at inferior conjunction with the sun, which the Goodman-Martinez-Thompson correlation asserts, or whether, and to the contrary, that they chose a position for the planet in association with the base-day of the Dresden Codex Venus Table that privileges its proximity to superior conjunction with the sun, which is the position I have asserted here. Using the same sequence of Venus periods that was employed above, from July 3, 1916 to June 28, 1932, but shifting the focus to the interval between consecutive superior conjunctions, the following series of periods is determined: 592, 577, 588, 585, 578; 592, 577, 588, 585, 578. While the variation here spreads over a wider range of values, the average remains fixed at 584 days. What can be seen here is that Venus synodic periods do maintain a relative consistency over time in a repetitious sequence of variables that could have been observed and recorded by dedicated astronomers. At the same time, however, there is a clear fluctuation in the values that would have been derived from observations depending on whether the astronomer counted intervals between inferior conjunctions or superior conjunctions of the planet with the sun. It is also true that using a visible position of the planet, last or first days of visibility before and after the solar conjunctions, would have confused the issue of average length considerably more at inferior conjunction, because that interval varies from as little as 2 days to as many as 12, depending on the time of year it occurs, than it would have done at superior conjunction, because that interval is almost always 50 to 52 days in length.
What this may suggest, then, is that the position at inferior conjunction shows an advantage in terms of having a narrower range of variables covering a maximum of 8 days (580 to 588) but a wider possibility in terms of the number of days the planet could remain invisible at that position. At superior conjunction, on the other hand, the length of the individual periods varies more radically (592 to 577) but the duration of invisibility is considerably more stable at 50 to 52 days. This distinction is significant because we must assume that Maya astronomers were watching for days when Venus was last visible before the conjunction and first visible after it had occurred. The Mayas, however, solved the essential problem of the variable periods of Venus, not by picking a point in its orbit near inferior conjunction with the sun as the GMT correlation number (584283) suggests, which would have put the base-day position of the Dresden Codex Venus Table at the least stable point in the planet's synodic period, but rather by picking a position for the base-day 236 days before superior conjunction with the sun, as the correlation number (563334) I have proposed does, wherein Venus had reached a relatively stationary point in its synodic period just before maximum western elongation from the sun (at 46.1*) in the morning sky. a highly visible position in the sky that changes only a few tenths of a degree over an ensuing period of several weeks in real time.
More specifically, at the base-day position of the Venus Table (9.9.9.16.0 1 Ahau 18 Kayab), which calculates to September 27, 565 A.D. from the zero base day on April 29, 3171 B.C., Venus had reached a position at 46.1* of elongation from the sun. Eleven days later, on October 8, Venus reached western elongation and stood at 46.6* from the sun. Thirteen days after that, on October 21, Venus returned to a position of 46.1* of elongation from the sun as it began its return motion toward superior conjunction. Over the course of 24 days, then, Venus moved a total of only five-tenths of one degree from where it had been seen at the base-day of the Dresden Codex Venus Table. During this period of time, Venus's position relative to the stellar background shifted from its being near 47-Leonis, which rose 16 minutes before Venus on September 27 (2:28 AM as opposed to 2:44 AM), to one that brought it into conjunction with Zaniah in Virgo on October 21 (Z rose at 2:56 AM as opposed to V at 2:53 AM). Venus's conjunction with 47-Leonis occurred on September 23, four days before the base-day of the Venus Table with only one minute of actual time separating their passage across the eastern horizon (47-L at 2:44 AM as opposed to V at 2:45 AM). Autumnal Equinox occurred on September 20, 565 A. D., seven days before the base-day of the table.
As Venus continued its motion back toward the sun and superior conjunction, it reached its last day of visibility in the morning sky on April 25, 566 A. D. and stood at 6.9* of elongation from the sun. Venus rose at 5:23 AM, twenty minutes before the sun which reached the horizon at 5:43 AM. Three minutes after that, Alcyone, a visible star in the Pleiades cluster when not in conjunction with the sun, crossed the horizon at 5:46 AM. On May 1, six days later, Venus and Alcyone were in conjunction with each other with Alcyone rising at 5:22 AM and Venus two minutes later at 5:24 AM. At 5.3* of elongation from the sun, neither Venus nor Alcyone was visible to naked-eye observation. Twenty days later, Venus reached its conjunction with the sun and stood at 0.2* of elongation from it in the evening sky. This position, of course, was recorded by the Mayas in the Dresden Codex Venus Table as 3 Cib 9 Zac and is the first day of the Table's subsequent 104-year run.
Why any of this astronomy matters, of course, concerns the fact that the zero base-day in the Long Count, the one derived from the correlation number (563334) which establishes this astronomy, places Venus at 7.6* of elongation from the sun in the evening sky 27 days after its superior conjunction with the sun on April 2, 3171 B. C. Venus's first day of possible visibility after this solar conjunction probably occurred four days prior to the zero base-day on April 25, when it reached 6.5* of elongation in the evening sky. This fact has considerable significance in a different context because of the number of intercalary days that are added to Eurocentric calendrical practice but omitted from the Maya calendrical system altogether. This is true because there are 26 leap-days in 104 years and the 3 Cib 9 Zac first-day of the second run of the Dresden Codex Venus Table regresses that many days exactly from the position it holds in the European calendar after the first 104 years are counted. Hence, the second 3 Cib 9 Zac falls on April 25, 670 A. D., and marks Venus's position at 1.3* of elongation from the sun in the evening sky after its superior conjunction with the sun which occurred four days earlier on April 21. The other point to be taken here, of course, as I detailed in the previous note in this series, on the day before Venus's superior conjunction in the ancient sequence of events, on April 1, 3171 B.C., Venus was in conjunction with Alcyone, which rose at 6:16 AM, or one minute before Venus did at 6:17 AM. At the time Venus stood at 1.0* of elongation from the sun in the morning sky. On April 2, 3171 B.C., Venus reached 1.0* of elongation in the evening sky after completing its superior conjunction. On that day, Alcyone crossed the eastern horizon at 6:12 AM. The sun did the same at 6:12 AM as well.
To say that the astronomy in one place, zero base-day, is the same as the astronomy in the other, first-day of the Dresden Codex Venus Table, is to say what is only perfectly obvious. Since every piece of this astronomy was determined by a choice made to establish a sequence of lunar and solar eclipses consistent with the Dresden Codex Eclipse Table, and had nothing whatsoever to do with the incidence of conjunctions between the sun, the star cluster known as the Pleiades, and Venus, there is virtually no chance that any of this is the result of meaningless coincidence or prescribed manipulation on my part. This is Maya designer astronomy, not manipulation, not accident. In order to read the full "history" of this design, it will be necessary to examine the relationship between the sun, the moon, the Pleiades, and Venus as the Dresden Codex Venus Table overtakes the Dresden Codex Eclipse Table in real Maya time.
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To reach [Note 1]; [Note 2]; [Note 3]; [Note 4]; [Note 5]; [Note 6]; [Note 7]; [Note 8]; [Note 9]; [Note 9a]; [Note 10]; [Note 11]; [Note 13]; [Note 14]; [Note 15]; [Note 16]; [Note 17]; [Note 18] in this series of thoughts.
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