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Build a Stone-Age Observatory
Building Your Own Megalithic Observatory
In his Precessional Time (2011) Richard Heath cites (p.22) The Hyperborean Origin of the Indo-European Culture by J.G. Bennett and posits that "astronomy in the polar regions gives clearer access to celestial phenomena that are otherwise broken up by night and day." Heath, of course refers to the fact that in Scandinavia and the northern Scotland islands there are winter periods when the Sun almost ceases to shine, and in the summer one can see the Sun bobbing along the horizon almost without setting at all. The Greeks affirm that the Hyperborean Apollo came down from the Far North where Stonehenge was regarded a great temple of astronomy. While glaciers froze North America and Europe, the Gulf Stream warmed the Northern Atlantic coastlands and islands creating a most temperate climate suitable for scientific endeavors. Indeed farms and houses have been discovered along the coast of Mayo in Ireland under 20+ feet of turf soil including gigantic Beech trees which only survive in temperate and sheltered climates.
Observers located near the equator would have difficulty understanding the retrograde motion of the planets which would on the other hand be clearly demonstrated in the polar regions which give the observer a clear panoramic and unobstructed view of celestial timing and mechanics. Alexander Thom in Megalithic Sites in Britain (1967), Chapter 11 -"The Outer Hebrides", writes that a very great amount of information is to be obtained at the Outer Hebrides which are about a hundred miles of islands with only two passages through which for many months of the year are rendered impassible by the strong seas breaking upon the shallow waters. The west coast of these islands is generally flat and support much of the population, and includes some of the finest stretches of beach in Britain. Thom writes that in Lewis at Callanish "lies the most important group of circles and alignments in Britain." Many of the sites are interrelated and based upon Pythagorean triangles measuring a complete array of astronomical declinations, even the minute variations in the inclination of the moon's orbit (plus or minus 10') -which was only rediscovered by Tycho Brahe (1546-1601).
The first step to building an observatory is to find a reasonably flat place surrounded in the far distance by low lying hills of a saw-tooth pattern to be used as foresights for the specific rising and settings of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars. The observatory would use poles planted in the ground as backsights to the mountain range prior to erecting the flat sides of standing stones as more permanent markers. The Summer solstice rising of the Sun would be the farthest north-east position marked along the view of the saw-tooth range initially by a pole between the mountain and the main backsight of the observer. The Summer solstice setting of the Sun would be in the opposite direction north-west on the same solstice day. The intersection between solstice rising and setting would be true North establishing the North-South line. This North-South line should be rechecked during the survey of the winter solstice sunrise and sunset because the bisection of this angle between them is naturally also the North-South line in order to reaffirm the first North-South line survey. Once this line is rechecked it should be the true and correct line from North to South. The right angles to this line are therefore the demarcation of East to West -and consequently and by definition the direction of the Spring and Autumn Equinoxes.
It may be appreciated how very easy it is to establish an accurate and scientific observatory of the sky and the annular calendar. Ancient people then further divided this fourfold division of the astronomical points of the Sun's course into a division of eight, calling them the quarter-days of the calendar -and these had social significance as occasions for fairs, judgments, and deciding important matters in the community. The four solstical and equinoctial were reserved for religious celebrations. From this original determination of North-South-East-West and the further eight-fold division of the land proceeded the survey of towns, cities, lands, farms, countries, and the very globe itself. Our current GPS system is still founded upon this system.
Astronomer Fred Hoyle describes the 56 Aubrey holes inside the bank and ditch centered on Stonehenge. Hoyle says, “The path of the Moon changes slowly, but discernably, from month to month because there is a variation in the angle which the Earth’s rotational axis makes with the plane of the Moon’s orbit.” Hoyle writes that Stonehenge is a tracking device for eclipse prediction. The apparent orbit of the Sun is set at 5°9’ to the orbit of the Moon. Their apparent orbits intersect in two places called the nodes of the Moon’s orbit (N and N’). The Moon’s orbit and its nodes slew along and around the Sun’s path completing a complete circuit every 18.61 years. This causes the 18.61 year cycle of the extreme swings between most northern moonrise and most southern moonrise (and of course, the moonsets). This 18.61 year cycle is commonly called the Metonic cycle. By observing the changing moonrise, the points N and N’ can be deduced –and these are the only places where eclipses are possible at the crossing the path of the Sun and the Moon. In the Aubrey circle two round stones placed upon N and N’ are moved three holes every year to account for the Metonic cycle of the nodes (56 holes representing the year ÷ 3 =18.66 years, close to 18.61 years). Another round stone marker is placed upon the Aubrey circle and moved two holes once every 13 days (56 ÷ 2 = 28 x 13 = 364 days + 1 = 365). The number 364 coordinates the Sun and the Moon and also divides the four seasons of the year into 91 days like the steps of the pyramid at Chichen Itza. Thereby the following system is arranged according to Fred Hoyle (p.59-60):
1. Move a Sun marker one Aubrey hole every 6.5 days –that is alternating on the morning of the seventh day after and evening move, and on the evening of the sixth day after a morning move.
2. Move the markers for the nodal points N and N’ by three Aubrey holes each year.
3. Move a Moon marker one Aubrey hole each morning and one Aubrey hole each evening.
Stone Age Computers of the Sun and Moon by Robin Heath
Robin Heath in Sun, Moon, and Earth (p.42) explains the method of a Stone Age calendar designer who observed the Moon passing “the same star in the sky every 27.3 days while the Sun takes 365 days. Dividing one by the other and choosing the nearest whole number , our designer would soon settle for 13 months of 28 days in a year. This gives a calendar of 364 days –a number divisible by 2, 4, 7 and 13 –a 52 week year with four 13-week seasons of 91 days, a year with 13 months. Practically, our designer could arrange 28 markers around the perimeter of a circle and arrange for a “moon-pole” to be moved counterclockwise once a day. A “sun-pole” would then be moved in the same direction, only thirteen times more slowly.” The system is perfectly controlled and adjusted by setting the moon-pole directly opposite the sun-pole on the day of the Full-Moon.
Robin Heath draws and describes (p.54) stone circles which are definitely not circular, and appear to be flattened. Many of these are extremely old with an occasional stone knocked out of alignment. Because of their extreme age they appear to be rustic and quaint, rather than the instruments of high science that they prove to be. The geometry of the flattened circles is based upon crossed lines with a north-south axis perpendicular to an east-west axis.
Two identical circles are drawn forming the vesica piscis upon the east-west axis. The focus of one circle is upon this axis, and the second circle is focused upon either one of the points where the first circle intersects this axis. Then a tight rope is stretched from the center, the crossing of the north-south axis and the east-west axis –and this distance is swung down and marked upon the southern tip of the north-south axis line. This swing-down marks the radius of the stones in the south-west quadrant. When this radius is continued upward it marks the radius for the stones of the south-east quadrant. The flattened circle is completed by sketching the arc joining the tops of the two congruent circles.
Image of Stone Age Computer pg.54 Robin Heath]
Then stones may be arranged to mark Sun rises and sets on the summer and winter solstices and the equinoxes. Also the extreme Moon sets and rises during its 18.618 year rotation of its orbital nodes may also be marked by stones. This all looks all too easy to be true, creating a calendar clock which is perfectly accurate for the latitude by simple observation of set and rise points.
Robin Heath now says, “This most beautiful analogue of the Sun, Moon, Earth system stores their key constants and ancient metrology all within itself as ratios. An awesome glimpse of an ancient wisdom is now finally revealed.” Heath says this because the interior triangle, BCP, imposed upon a circle of 360° simply and correctly creates the very complex expression of the eclipse year, the solar year, and the year of 13 moons:
18.618 x 18.618 = 346.62 days (the eclipse year)
18.618 x 19.618 = 365.242 days (the solar year)
18.618 x 20.618 = 383.89 days (13 lunations)
Robin Heath says (p.52), “The astronomy reveals the actual geometry and numerical structure of the Sun, Moon, Earth system. Imagine a solar eclipse at (1). The Sun then moves to meet up with the same node after an eclipse year (2), 346.62 days later. Passing the original eclipse point (1) at the end of one year, the Sun and Moon then meet for the thirteenth lunation at (3).
An isosceles triangle, drawn to fit the angles generated by the astronomy, also then defines the solar eclipse limits, and has the remarkable property of replicating the numbers shown above as ratios. In addition, the shorter side has a length 12.368, the annual lunation rate. One marvels at this revelation of the cosmic order!”
The Lunar Nodes
Robin Heath explains (p.20) the details about the Moon’s nodes:
The orbit of the Moon is tilted with respect to that of the Earth by an angle of 5.14°. The effect is that the Moon travels above the ecliptic (the apparent path of the Sun around the zodiac) for about half the sidereal month, and travels beneath it for the other half. The two places where the Moon crosses the ecliptic each month are called the lunar nodes, and the always lie opposite each other.”
Eclipses only happen when a Full or New Moon occurs within 12½ ° or 18 ½ °, respectively, of the nodes; total eclipses when the alignment is almost exact. These are the eclipse limits for lunar and solar eclipses.
The axis of the nodes moves backward around the calendar, taking 18.618 years (6,800 days) to complete a circuit. It moves 19.618 days per year. To the ancients the nodes were thought of as the head and the tail of a huge celestial dragon that swallowed the Moon or Sun during an eclipse. The Nodal period is still known as the Draconic year.
The Sun meets a node every 173.3 days (an eclipse season); it meets a particular node after two of these periods have elapsed, this both defining and completing the eclipse year of 346.62 days. Is it not the strangest thing that 346.62 = 18.618 x 18.618?
www.cosmomyth.com
copyright by Eartholder 2012
