Learn something new every....

[Mark Wagner]

Is Mt. Everest the mountain closest to the stars?

Mark

[Richard Navarrete]

Isn’t it Olympus Mons on Mars?

Richard

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On Monday, September 29, 2025, 2:23 PM, Mark Wagner <itsmar...@gmail.com> wrote:

Is Mt. Everest the mountain closest to the stars?

Mark

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[Akarsh Simha]

Depends on which stars and where the planets are positioned in their orbits 

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[Mark Wagner]

This is a known answer Akarsh....

[Paul Alsing]

No, it is actually Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador.

• Elevation above sea level: ~6,263 meters (20,548 feet)
• Distance from Earth’s center: ~6,384.4 kilometers (3,967.1 miles)
• That’s 2,168 meters (7,113 feet) farther from the center than Everest’s summit

\Paul

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Sent: Monday, September 29, 2025 2:23 PM
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Subject: [TAC] Learn something new every....

Is Mt. Everest the mountain closest to the stars?

Mark

[Mark Wagner]

Paul's got it. Measured for the Earth's center.  The Equatorial bulge adds quite a bit and makes it the "highest" (closest to the stars) on earth (known).

Mark

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[Matthew Marcus]

Actually, if you want the mountain(top) closest to a *particular* star, that would depend on time of day or year, since the distance changes by up to 8000 miles.
This is assuming you confine your search to Earth. Do you want the mountaintop that at some time gets closest to any star? Then the only star to consider
is Proxima because the distances to other stars are greater by far more than Earth's diameter. Now, since Proxima is pretty far S, the closest mountaintop
may not be Everest or Chimborazo, but something farther S. OTOH, if what you want is distances averaged over time, I think no mountain wins because as
far as the mountain sticks out toward the star at one time, it will stick out away from the star at another.
tricky!

Sincerely,
Matthew Marcus

On 9/29/2025 3:56 PM, Mark Wagner wrote:
> Paul's got it. Measured for the Earth's center.  The Equatorial bulge adds quite a bit and makes it the "highest" (closest to the stars) on earth (known).
>
> Mark
>

> On Mon, Sep 29, 2025, 3:40 PM Paul Alsing <pnal...@gmail.com <mailto:pnal...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> No, it is actually *Mount Chimborazo* in Ecuador.
> #
> *Elevation above sea level*: ~6,263 meters (20,548 feet)
> #
> *Distance from Earth’s center*: ~6,384.4 kilometers (3,967.1 miles)
> #
> That’s *2,168 meters (7,113 feet) farther* from the center than Everest’s summit
> \Paul
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* sf-ba...@googlegroups.com <mailto:sf-ba...@googlegroups.com> <sf-ba...@googlegroups.com <mailto:sf-ba...@googlegroups.com>> on behalf of Mark Wagner <itsmar...@gmail.com <mailto:itsmar...@gmail.com>>
> *Sent:* Monday, September 29, 2025 2:23 PM
> *To:* sf-bay-tac <sf-ba...@googlegroups.com <mailto:sf-ba...@googlegroups.com>>
> *Subject:* [TAC] Learn something new every....

>
> Is Mt. Everest the mountain closest to the stars?
>
> Mark
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[Jay Freeman]

Mark's original post did not specify "on Earth", so considering that the Sun is a star, the closest known mountain to the stars would be somewhere on Mercury ...

-- Jay Reynolds Freeman

---------------------
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On Sep 29, 2025, at 3:57 PM, Mark Wagner <itsmar...@gmail.com> wrote:



[Richard Navarrete]

You original post didn’t specify the earth, otherwise I would have totally nailed the answer . 😉

Richard

<<Paul's got it. Measured for the Earth's center.  The Equatorial bulge adds quite a bit and makes it the "highest" (closest to the stars) on earth (known).

Mark>>

Sent from the all new AOL app for iOS

https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sf-bay-tac/CAG72LjBKuhxLN8vPkHRWrcwj2b7Cio9N_q1SK7PEejPju52JQw%40mail.gmail.com

.

[Ted Hauter]

Actually it's whatever point on Earth be it land or sea bottom at that moment is pointed at Proxima Centauri.

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[Vishal Kasliwal]

My vote (assuming we're limited to the Earth), is Mount Chimborazo. Although Mount Chimborazo is nowhere near as high as Mt Everest, its closer proximity to the equator renders it the furthest point from the center of the Earth, also making the summit of Mount Chimborazo, IMO, the closest point on the surface of the Earth to the stars.

-Vishal

On Mon, Sep 29, 2025 at 2:23 PM Mark Wagner <itsmar...@gmail.com> wrote:

Is Mt. Everest the mountain closest to the stars?

Mark

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[Mark Wagner]

Leave it to Jay.  Point taken. Even if not intended.

Mark

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[Ted Hauter]

😂

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[Muriel Dulieu]

But Jay, Mark said the closest mountain to the starS not one random (albeit very special to us) star. So maybe he is looking for the center of the universe that has smallest distance to all the stars. Which would require the universe to be finite. Is it finite? What is the center of an infinite universe, probably anywhere…so Mount Everest is as good a guess as any. 

-Muriel

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On Sep 29, 2025, at 5:46 PM, Ted Hauter <thgo...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Jay Freeman]

Well, in that case, the mean distance (or other appropriate statistical measure of distance) to all stars which are not the Sun would be the same everywhere, but that distance measured at particular points would be marginally altered by including the particular distance to our own particular star, and since the closest known mountain to the Sun is indeed on Mercury, I submit that my conclusion stands as given. :-)

-- Jay Reynolds Freeman, Deep-Sky Pedant

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[Ted Hauter]

Another option is the paradoxical photon.

Because photons are created paradoxically,  meaning it, the photon was created knowing you the viewer will one day look its way, there is an option to say that all light unobserved is neither far or near, so to only include observable or observed light from any one star.

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[Akarsh Simha]

BTW, is the full subject of the thread "Learn something new every full moon"?