To Mr. Chandrahari - a doubt on the nodes

[Guest guest]

Dear Sir,

 

I thank you for that insightful post yesterday on ayanamsa. Since you

so obviously have an analytical and scientific bent of mind, thought

I'd get a long-standing elementary doubt clarified - on whether it is

indeed correct for us to automatically assume the nodes to be 180

degrees away from each other?

 

If I've understood correctly, the nodes are the two points where the

lunar orbit intersects the earth's orbit, the lunar orbit being

inclined at about five degrees to the earth's orbit.

 

We know that the diameters of the lunar and earth's orbits are roughly

59 and 11,765 times the diameter of the earth. From the surface of the

earth, which is where we are as we look out, if two points are to be

180 degrees away from each other, they've to be directly on opposite

points. Now from one of the nodes, if you draw a line touching the

earth's surface and extend it, does it touch the other node? No way!

It cannot. The line joining the two nodes, and the lines joining the

nodes with the surface of the earth, form a triangle; not a

large-angled triangle, but a triangle nonetheless. This is the

topocentric positioning. Even if you consider geocentric positioning,

there still is a triangle formed between the center of the earth and

the line joining the two nodes.

 

For accuracy, I recently put these down on a scale in AutoCAD (can't

attach the pic file here because it doesn't let me) and saw that the

angle subtended by the nodes from the earth's surface is about 181.7

degrees. If true, this *can* mean that when Rahu is at 29-degree

something in Aries, Ketu is at 0-degree something in Scorpio. That'll

not only change the perspective of a chart, you know what can happen

to divisional charts thereon

 

Why then do we assume that the nodes are always exactly 180 degrees

away from one another? I'm not of course alluding to true and mean

nodes here, which albeit another can of worms, still assume a

180-degree constancy anyway.

 

I'd be grateful if you could squeeze some time for us on this. I'd

first broached this topic a couple of years ago on an astro group,

without much luck.

 

Yours respectfully,

 

+++