What does stonehenge have to do with astronomy

He says Nabta Playa might not get as much attention as Stonehenge because it is significantly smaller, and up until a few decades ago, it was buried in sand in a remote region of Africa.

Trends in research also come and go. Egyptian archaeology was en vogue throughout the 19th and the 20th centuries. But that fascination has waned over time. Unfortunately, most of the popular coverage of Egyptian archaeology now fixates on pseudoscience and ancient aliens. After their study was published in , tourists located the stone circle by plucking the latitude and longitude from the research paper. Receive news, sky-event information, observing tips, and more from Astronomy's weekly email newsletter.

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Dave's Universe Year of Pluto. Groups Why Join? Astronomy Day. The Complete Star Atlas. This 7,year-old stone circle tracked the summer solstice and the arrival of the annual monsoon season. It's also the oldest known astronomical site on Earth. The stone circle of Nabta Playa marks the summer solstice, a time that coincided with the arrival of monsoon rains in the Sahara Desert thousands of years ago.

The Discovery of Nabta Playa In the s, Egypt was planning a major dam project along the Nile River that was going to flood important ancient archaeological sites. The first astronomers After seven years without being able to crack their mystery, Wendorf called in Malville, an expert on archaeoastronomy of the American Southwest.

Eide Mariff, a Bedouin guide and excavator who worked with archaeologists for decades in southern Egypt, works with a crew from his tribe to remove megalithic stones at Nabta Playa. Reconstruction of the calendar circle at Nabta Playa. Cattle cult More than 10, years ago, Northern Africa shifted away from a cold, dry Ice Age climate that had persisted for tens of thousands of years.

An archaeological excavation found this cow-shaped megalithic rock sculpture buried at Nabta Playa in the Sahara Desert near the border of Egypt and Sudan. The Stonehenge monument in England is known for its alignment with the summer solstice sunrise, and a is popular destination for revelers welcoming the longest day of the year. But on the same axis, in the opposite direction, is the point on the horizon where the sun sets on the winter solstice.

And some experts suspect that the midwinter alignment may have been the more important occasion for the Neolithic people who built Stonehenge. The usual interpretation of Stonehenge would make its center the place from which the midsummer sun was observed over the Heel Stone. This is almost certainly mistaken.

The viewing position was at the Heel Stone itself, outside the sacred space, and the chief celebration was that of the setting midwinter Sun, seen through the narrow central corridor. Stonehenge is a skeleton through which light can pass from numerous directions, as in the timber monuments before it, but all of these were carefully planned so as to present a solid appearance against the sky when viewed from suitable positions — and the Heel stone is just such a position.

Sight of the last glint of winter sunlight through the center of the black edifice must have been deeply moving. The long sides point towards the positions of the Southernmost Moonrise and Northernmost Moonset — and the Moon only reaches these positions every What's more, it's only at the latitude of Stonehenge give or take 30 miles or so that these lunar and solar extreme positions make a right angle.

Go further north or south and the Station Stone Rectangle would become a slightly squashed parallelogram. Some archaeologists and astronomers dispute that the Station Stone Rectangle intentionally marks these lunar alignments, but given the attention that the extreme positions of the Moon attracts at other neolithic sites in the British Isles and elsewhere we are perhaps doing the Stonehenge builders an injustice if we doubt their ability to mark these points.

The next time that the Moon will reach these extreme positions will be in , so let's hope that the southernmost Moonrise nearest the Summer Solstice and northernmost Moonset nearest the Winter Solstice will enjoy clear skies.

For visits inside Stonehenge to see where these alignments are please refer to our Stonehenge Special access page. Page last updated; Friday, January 6, Astronomical alignments at Stonehenge. When were alignments first noticed in modern times? Where does the sun rise over Stonehenge now? Where does the sun set on the winter solstice at Stonehenge? Here's the free view from the National Trust field near the top of the Avenue: … and here's the paying visitors' view from the walkway itself.

It must have been quite a discovery for these stone-age tribesmen! In your writeup, tell how you could Q2 find north, Q3 find your present latitude, and Q4 set up a small stonehenge that would point to the rising and setting suns at the equinoxes and solstices. You can use measurement devices like a protractor, string, astrolabe a protractor with a plumb-bob attached , and your solar-motion demonstrator, but you have to be able to do the job in a few days or nights - you can't wait years to see where the Sun actually goes.

Figure: The early Stonehenge. The illustration shows several stages of construction at the site. The first of these, "Stonehenge I," is an earthwork ring about m in diameter and 2m high. Its completeness was broken as of about BC by a single gap directed in the approximate direction of an outlying marker called the Heel Stone. In this gap, excavation has uncovered a grid of post holes: the remains, it seems, of an effort to mark the northernmost excursion of the moon.

Note that the Heel Stone lies slightly away from a line drawn from the center of the earthwork ring to the horizon point marking the midsumer solstitial sunrise; in BC the Heel Stone was presumably more erect, and thus the alignment was more nearly perfect.