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by Lloyd » Sun Oct 09, 2016 7:05 pm
Cardona cites Native Americans who say the Sun was originally seen as a small bright star. I don't know if there are any other similar myths. If it's correct, then the Sun was originally at a great distance, maybe as far as the planet Pluto or so. The Sun apparently was visible since that time as it got ever closer, but when the Saturn system broke up a few thousand years later, the Sun and the planets may have become obscured by atmospheric and interplanetary dust from the breakup for some time.
Before the breakup and after the original Saturn flare, as the Saturn system approached the Sun, possibly on an elliptical or spiraling orbit, if Earth were trailing Saturn like SL-9 comet fragments trailed each other in single file, then Saturn would have appeared directly above anyone at the north pole. Anyone near the equator would have seen it near the horizon, if at all. At mid-latitudes it would have appeared to be between the horizon and the midheaven, but it would have appeared to be always at the same place, just like the north star does now.
Saturn would have appeared dimmer initially and would have gotten brighter as the system got closer to the Sun. The Sun would have appeared to be at about 90 degrees from the direction of Saturn. The Moon is now near the plane of the ecliptic of the Earth and the Sun. Now picture the Moon at the area of the sky where the pole star is. The Sun never appears to get near the position of the pole star, but is always about 90 degrees away. Saturn would have looked somewhat like the Moon at the pole star's position, but much, much larger and somewhat brighter, especially on the sunlit side. The Moon now goes through phases, because it's close to the ecliptic, which brings it sometimes in front of the Sun and sometimes in the opposite direction behind Earth and otherwise between those two phases of new and full moons. But at the pole star's position, there would be no phases. There would always be a crescent, approximately like a half moon on the side facing the Sun.
If it took the Saturn system 5,000 years from the time of Saturn's flare in the Kuiper belt to reach the point near the orbit of Jupiter or so where the system broke up, Saturn would have brightened only very gradually, so no one would have noticed. The same applies to the Sun, but at least some people's cultural memory may have discerned that the Sun initially appeared as a distant star. Venus initially appeared as an 8-pointed star on the face of Saturn and Mars appeared as a red circle in the center of Venus. But Mars moved unstably below Saturn and appeared to get large as it came closer to Earth, then it would retreat back to Venus. Eventually, Venus became unstable as well and then the breakup occurred and things became chaotic for a while.