VR, Kent Hovind was already out of the fold with AIG before this incident
happened, and so I don't think that this had any bearing on that. My criticism
of Hugh in regards to trigonometric parallax has been consistent. It is not a
trigonometric parallax as defined by any astronomy text book that discusses the
issue and even by the first two paragraphs of Hugh's published three paragraph
description of these new measurements. If one reads Hugh's article, one can
only conclude that this was done with trigonometric parallax using the earth's
orbit as the baseline. As you correctly point out, the triangle is going the
other way. This difference is far more significant than you realize. I
honestly think that Hugh was shooting from the hip again and didn't fully digest
the astronomy literature articles that he cited. He's done this before. For
instance, I document in my AIG article how Hugh misunderstood MACHO discoveries
of dark matter as being in the LMC when even the titles of the articles should
have told anyone that the dark matter objects were in the halo of the Milky Way.
As I said before, these may seem like minor points, but they bring into question
his judgement, credibility, and professional competence.
I don't think that the great distances of these two objects was ever a
question for AIG - it certainly wasn't for me. I don't think it was for Kent
either, though he didn't understand at the time how this measurement could be
made. I've talked to him since then and I think that I convinced him.
Parallax is a standard unit of distance, and it is used even when distance
is not measured using trigonometric parallax measurements, such as with
statistical parallax, dynamic parallax, Cepheids, Novae, and type Ia supernovae.
Therefore it is proper to describe distances this way and I would have to judge
that NASA is competent.
I didnt' say that trigonometry was impossible at these great distances; I
said that trigonometric parallax was not possible at this distance at this time.
Danny

Danny R. Faulkner
a stellar astronomer
faulkner@...