Sunspots in the eyes of Peary ‘network navigator’

by Wayne Davidson

 Doug Davies is the son of the Admiral of the Foundation for the Advancement of Navigation, backed by National Geographic, dedicated to refute Sir Wally Herbert’s essay printed in their magazine in 1989. But Admiral Thomas Davies passed away, I regrettably missed having this debate with him, I am sure he would have found it stimulating. However Doug turns out to be his son, he decided to criticize my work with refraction, especially because it kills any chance of Peary ‘s North Pole sextant measurements to be true. The first section of his critique fails, as all mean name calling does: “All Cook supporters are crazy” etc, of course this really explains why Peary’s sun measurements were grotesquely impossible. At least his father read more like a gentleman with respect to Dr Cook.

Doug Davies has bad Internet manners as well, like using copyright to claim intellectual ownership of other peoples web sites, even of Cook and Peary’s pictures. And not replying to E-mail’s while using the content of those E-mails for his web page. The man appears to have caught Peary’s very own obsessiveness with control over other people’s thoughts.

Atmospheric refraction at the Poles is a new subject of science, just breaking out, almost 100 years after Cook vs. Peary. To make it simple, consider the sun disk as tires on automobiles. If it is very hot outside the air within the tires expand and the tires look really round, however if it is very cold outside, say -20°C, then the same tires appear and are really flatter. Polar Priorities readers living in Cold winter areas are probably quite aware of this. For similar reasons, the sun disk appears flatter in very cold air, while much rounder in warm air. As explained in past P.P. articles, the science involved is a bit complicated. To make it simple, here is the first proposed rule of sunset science:

“A colder atmosphere always causes significant upward refraction elevation boost accompanied with vertical sun disk shrinkage.” Except for sun disks nearly touching the horizon, the above is a law, unalterable by critics or sextant experts. Peary’s own few measurements of the sun disk vertical dimension alleged to have been taken at the North Pole were shrunken by an average of 10 seconds of arc. This is impossible for many reasons: foremost it is now known that cold air shrinks Peary’s sun disk by at least 40 Arc seconds, that authority is none other than the US Navy, but in reality the sun disk in Peary’s time of much colder atmosphere should have shrank by 60 to 120 arc seconds. Secondly, I use a digital camera and telescope method, which is far more precise than the sextant, it has never given the same vertical sun disk measurement twice. No technique can always give the same vertical sun disk measurement, because the air above is constantly changing from one moment to the next, this phenomenon is not significant enough to be perceived by naked eyes, but any optical instrument can show this.

Figure 2 blow up of Peary’s April 6, 1909 sun from The Foundation’s 1989 Supplemental Report. It very much looks like the sun has a vertical diameter shrunken in excess of 120 Arc Seconds! The vertical diameter appears 12 times smaller than Peary’s measurement. But to confirm this one needs the original pictures. If verified, this picture proves that Peary couldn’t have measured a much rounder sun as he claimed by his sextant measurements.

But there is much more than just compression, Peary actually measured a sun disk larger than the sun disk itself! 32 minutes 10 seconds. This is absolutely impossible. To explain this, Davies used a term called standard deviation, which is essentially an error factor, usually associated with all instrument measurements. For now, this error is 20 arc seconds, for Peary’s sextant it use to be 10 (in 1989), but this changes according to the intensity of challenge. Even with this 20 arc seconds standard deviation, Davies defense of Peary turns sour, having a sun disk average of 31 minutes and 57 seconds (31.95'), is equally absolutely impossible according to all observatories own Earth. But to compound this further, there was never any extensive Polar refraction work in the past, it turns out that refraction in the Polar Regions is much more strong than estimated. Peary’s very measurement of the sun disk confirms that a) didn’t make a sextant measurement at the Pole and b) he fabricated it.

Doug Davies one time explanation: “Peary rounded his sextant numbers” so as to always achieve these impossibilities, was a ridiculous assertion, and it is a good thing he removed this poor defensive stance from his web site. But Davies biggest challenge is for him to come up with a sun disk shrunken at 10" of arc at Peary’s North Pole sun elevation from any sea level location on Earth. Why did the 1989 Foundation for the promotion of the Art of Navigation reported that this 10 arc seconds was “normal”? Is it because up until 1989, it was some sort of scientific theory? Mr Davies also fails to grasp that nowadays, averaging differential refraction readings within one degree segments is now an outdated method, we can compare many shots at exactly the same astronomical elevation in order to analyze the results a little better.

Reading Davies web site shows how well Davies understands refraction and or meteorology, he takes (without permission) a quote from mine: that Cook “observed the sun with about 5 atmospheres [of pressure] and a surface temperature of -31 to -44 F, a great deal of cold air.” the: [of pressure] is an add on from Davies, which demonstrated his incapacity to grasp concepts of distance, as 5 atmospheres of distance, rather than pressure. If he would have corresponded, like a gentleman, he would have been taught of this essential concept in refraction.

Davies then comes up to criticizing Dr Cook’s North Pole measurements. They are to say the least fascinating, nowhere near what 1908 science would have explained, nowhere near a forger from 1911 can possibly imagine. Dr Cook’s sun disk shrank 5 times more than I have ever measured in Resolute Bay. Yet again what was the Atmosphere like above Dr Cook’s expedition? Was the Arctic ocean so frozen with ice thick enough to dramatically cool the atmosphere well beyond present day Arctic ocean ice made much thinner by world wide Global Warming? Or were Dr Cook’s measurements flawed? I don’t say forged, because no self respecting explorer can come up with such outrageous numbers. None more preposterous than seeing the sun when it was 4 degrees below the horizon, but this is possible, and proven*, and yes just as Dr Cook reported on his way to the Pole in 1908. But why didn’t Marvin nor Peary write about the same thing? It is perhaps not a mystery, but a concealment. Peary (like Davies) wanted to be credible; he needed no controversies, seeing the sun when it was well below the horizon was very controversial. A true explorer calls it as it is, a fame seeker calls it as it should be.

Extreme shrinkage of the sun disk is a matter worth investigating, but we must wait for very cold air to make a come back, and perhaps someone will take a few measurements, but for now I suggest coastal Antarctic colleagues to take up the challenge during their early Spring .

But to give a little credit to Davies, he concludes that Peary and Cook are essentially equals in their respective sun measurements at the Pole, which means that neither can be certified without further research. Although, the research with respect to Peary, has been researched many times over, and there is not a chance that he can be vindicated, especially in light of the cover up of Peary’s data (from 1909 to 1989), compared to Cook’s very early information release. Both Peary and Cook were explorers, but Cook was by far the most honest one, especially open for others to explore him, he was an explorers explorer.

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REFERENCES:

Robert E. Peary at the North Pole. A report to the National Geographic Society by the Foundatin for the Promotion of the Art of Navigation. Supplemental Report, 1989.

* = Applied Optics-LP, Volume 42, Issue 3, 379-389 January 2003 Gerrit de Veer’s Ture and Perfect Description of the Novaya Zemlya Effect, 24-27 January 1597 Stebren Y. van der Werf, Gunther P. Konnen, Waldemar H. Lehn, Frits Steenhuisen, Wayne P. S. Davidson

ELECTRONIC REFERENCE: 

www.douglasrdavis.com, My web pages: www.ch2r.com stands for extremely high horizon refraction

Where All Meridians Meet

Cook's Fantastic Trip to the Pole

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by Russell Gibbons

For much of a century (considering that we are just seven years away from the centennial of the beginning of the North Pole controversy) the "mainline" literature that has addressed the rival claims has generally tilted toward a bias for Robert E. Peary, or dismissed both explorers.

Thus it was with some surprise that we encountered the September/October 2002 number of Mercator's World, The Magazine of Maps, Geography and Discovery which has a regular feature department called "Field Notes," and which in this issue featured "Where All Meridians Meet:  Cook's Fantastic Trip to the Pole."

This proved to be a three page summary of Cook’s field notes from “My Attainment of the Pole,” with entries from early April 19, 20 and 21,1908 detailing the final approach and arrival at the Pole. The short preface to the notes is a brief summary of the controversy, fair and dispassionate.

(With one factual error: “Peary, officially recognized by the U.S. Congress in 1911 as the Discoverer of the Pole...” is incorrect. Congress, after the 5-4 recommendation of the Committee on Naval Affairs, removed that designation and gave the “Thanks of Congress for his Arctic Explorations resulting in reaching the North Pole.” The distinction is significant, for many Cook supporters had no objection to Peary’s claim of having reached but not having “discovered” the Pole.)

The subtitle did offer initial qualifications, for “fantastic” can be either variations of unreal or superb, but any reading of the Mercator’s piece would soon bring the positive side of the word into play. It is worth checking out by any reader. Coincidentally, two contributions in the 2002 issue of Polar Priorities deal with Cook’s field notes, that by Wayne Davidson in part and by Sheldon S.R. Cook as a significant point of argumentation (the title was also in place before the magazine.)

Two other contributions in this number of the journal reflect the “field notes’ of two of the board members of the Society- Jim Garlinghouse in an essay about his last ascent of Mount McKinley (Denali) and Lon Constantini in his account about a backpacking expedition on Baffin Island. Not all Society members are just “armchair explorers.”

 

Presenters at the Inuit/Explorers Symposium held on April 20 at the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University (from left): 
Patricia Huntingdon, Ted Heckathorn, Kenn Harper, Richard C. Davis, H.G. Jones and Lyle Dick (photo by David Kaufman).

 

In the North, explorers found no Inca treasure or the fabled riches of the Americas, but their quest was toward that and another goal-the fabled passage through the Northwest-following the undiscovered islands that bordered the frozen northern coast. Myth and legend propelled many of the early expeditions. Ship-destroying channels and icebergs took their toll and Sir John Franklin’s doomed expedition of 1845 became the classic flame for the Arctic moths that would follow. It would take almost a century, from Sir John Ross to Roald Amundson to find and follow the Northwest Passage.

Ironically, the vast literature of the quest by North American and European explorers of the 19th and early 20th centuries for the Northwest Passage and the elusive North Pole has much about the indigenous peoples but little about their continuing inter-relationships with white explorers. The inevitable “white man’s view of history” intrudes into this story, as it has with most of the history of exploration and discovery, with little credit to native peoples. The true accounts of deception, subjection and in many instances extermination of native peoples in the Western Hemisphere between the 15th and 19th centuries remains as a sordid and inglorious, if less frequently told, chapter of exploration and expansion. Charles Francis Hall, the obsessed Cincinnati printer who convinced Congress of the merits of his proposed expedition, introduced the Inuit to the Western world as much as any explorer of that period. Recently, however, Jean Malaurie, who lived among”The People” for many years wrote that “despite their seeming graciousness, (they are) hard and closed, and their behavior enigmatic.”

Russell Gibbons
Raimund E. Goerler

The vertical diameter of this sun disc taken in the Arctic is flatter by a factor of four times than that which Peary measured. Taken in August 2002, it can only shrink much more. Source: www.eh2r.com

Ahwelah and Etukishook, Dr Cook’s Inuit exploration companions, were hardened hunters of fame, people capable of surviving with spears and arrows in the cruelest environment in the world. But even for these tough travellers, nothing was ever so frightful as on the Arctic Ocean ice on March 25, 1908: “Half-dazed, I heard beneath me a series of echoing, thundering noises. I felt the ice floor on which I lay quivering.”...” Ah-we-lah leapt to his feet. In the same dizzy instant I saw the dome of the snow house open above me.” (Dr F.A. Cook, March 25, 1908) On March 25, 1908 they just passed the “Big Lead” by a few days, when all of a sudden the lead became active. The Big Lead area is a treacherous place. A sudden ice displacement is a known occurrence especially near the full or new moon periods, lately more often noted, witnessed by several expeditions, the Big Lead zone is more understood but still mysterious. Eighty years later at about the same date, just North of Ellesmere Island, March 23, 1989 had moving sea ice which made such a noise, frightened a young North Pole snowmobile guide enough to leave the Arctic ocean. The Big Lead swiftly opened that day, cracking hard ice to open at a staggering length of about 800 miles along the archipelago coast, on some spots the lead was several miles wide. The lead closed the following day, causing a huge noise. Heard at Ward Hunt Island some 40 miles away, it was like “continuous thunder”, according to a British station manager. Once silence returned, the end result was a huge pressure ridge as long as the eye can see, 1 km wide, 10 meters high, made mostly of crushed fresh ice stacked like myriads of shingles 30 feet high, it was a living hell to the expeditions who tried to cross it. Cook was therefore past the Big Lead when he heard the frightening ice thunder. This event can’t be faked or manufactured as a work of fiction, Dr. Cook was about at 84N. A few days prior, on March 21 Dr. Cook looked through his igloo ice glass, an igloo window: “As I awoke on the morning of March 21 and peered out of the eye-port of the igloo, the sun edged along the northeast.” Innocent as it seems, this statement proves his location. The sun was about -4 degrees below the horizon at that time.No work of fiction could have come up with this apparently preposterous story. A careful lie, would have been double checked and corrected before being published. On the other hand, a full account would and should look a bit strange, since no human had ever observed at Cook’s location. But, how did he see the sun? A new discovery, I call Extremely High Horizon Refraction (EH2r),confirms this observation. The colder the air, the more refraction is created, the higher the sun gets boosted upwards. Other similar observations can be found in history, the most famous one was Gerrit de Veer with William Barents in 1597. More recently the sun has been frequently filmed at -2 degrees below the horizon, while one photo from 1987 shows the sun above ground when it was -4.5 degrees below. Concordingly, Dr. Cook’s temperature on March 21 was -63 F, extremely cold weather boosted the sun to appear much higher that day. Admitting, as some historians claim, that Dr. Cook never ventured northwards past the tip of Axel Heiberg is discounted , for he was well on his way to the Pole, as he claimed. Finally, March 28, at 84 42' North Dr. Cook wrote: “Midnight; north cloudy, but the ice bright; many hummocks.” Again another innocent statement, but crucial information, the sun was -2.2 degrees below the horizon at that moment, but thanks to strong refraction, the sun was above sea ice. Despite clouds the ice was bright. It is common for the below the horizon sun to be boosted by about 2 degrees elevation in the high Arctic. There is more evidence supporting Cook, but for now, it is safe to say he was at 84 42 N or Northwards. Crucial research with Differential Refraction is underway at this time. Differential Refraction is a study of the flattening of the sun or moon by air. In our case it is very cold air which shrinks the sun to a line. From its known vertical diameter in space, about 32 minutes of arc, the sun shrinks vertically to a line less than 6 minutes of arc. At higher sun elevations, such as found with Peary and Cook sextant observations, the sun disk appears shrunken depending on how high it is above the horizon. Peary’s belated defense team, “The Foundation for the Promotion of Art of Navigation” claim that at 6 degree elevation, 10 seconds of arc compression is normal. But in fact the sun shrinks by two minutes of arc or more at 6 degrees. It remains to be seen whether Dr. Cook’s observation can be repeated though, his April 1908 observations indicate enormous compression. More so than measured today, but the air during Dr. Cook’s expedition should have been much colder than present times. Peary’s 10 seconds of Arc compression, can’t be explained in view of present data; he is off by a factor of 12. Dr. Cook’s sun disk observations, have not been repeated but they show a great deal more promise because it is expected that in very cold air the sun disk image compresses a great deal more. This March 15, 2002 sunline had another before it set at 2.29 degrees below the horizon. Sun is flatter vertically compared with horizontal measurement. March 15 2002 sunline had another 15 minutes to go before sunset. The official sunset time was wrong by 35 minutes. No Navigation table or program can calculate High Arctic sunset times.