Akinbo,
That's a first step, but of many. Think harder. What if you happened to be observing the sun from 'underneath'? In space that is ENTIRELY equivalent to what you assume as the 'top'.
That's what I mean by the arrogant human self centric thinking we must escape to understand nature. The fact that there is NO 'UP' IN SPACE actually MEANS something VERY important.
You say viewed from the north BOTH poles 'spin anticlockwise', but then stopped thinking. In fact the obverse is also true, viewed from the south BOTH POLES spin clockwise. The whole point is that all bodies spin is the same, it's only the observer orientation'/b] that means we finds one or the other. In practice, it's the pole moving towards an observer that dictates which spin we see. The body can be turned round without affecting the spin (as in electron 'spin flip') whereon we see the opposite spin, but from the SAME body!
THAT is the massive realisation which resolves the illogical nonsense of 'quantum non-locality'and allows unification with classical physics.
When we understand that we have taken the next big 'Copernican/Galilean' step away from self centric thinking, which is just as important a step.
On refraction; another good Young paper is this; but I don't have a free link.
Young, A.T., Sunset science. IV. Low-altitude refraction Astron.J. 127, 3622-3637 (2004). There are many others on the subject, but be careful as some use misguided assumptions.
Refraction by the sun's plasma will be much affected by both the density distribution varying with radius and the solar wind velocity, which also varies significantly locally. Precision is not possible, as consistently found experimentally (aberrations).
Stellar aberration (kinetic reverse refraction) by Earth's atmosphere also varies massively with declination up to 34 arcMINs! which has to be added 'by hand' to get accurate predictions for the current (AA2010) model, which most including the US navy use for navigation alongside DGPS. See my 2012 essay.
Finally. Newton was clearly wrong about the bucket and 'speed'. Throw as many stones as you wish but I hope you can find much better considered ones as all have bounced off without a scratch so far! I already tested it long ago with much worse than those you've found!
