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Archaeoastronomy And Stonehenge
The prehistoric monument of Stonehenge has long been studied for its possible connections with ancient astronomy. The site is aligned in the direction of the sunrise of the summer solstice and the sunset of the winter solstice. Early work Stonehenge has an opening in the henge earthwork facing northeast, and suggestions that particular significance was placed by its builders on the solstice and equinox points have followed. For example, the summer solstice Sun rose close to the Heel Stone, and the Sun's first rays shone into the centre of the monument between the horseshoe arrangement. While it is possible that such an alignment could be coincidental, this astronomical orientation had been acknowledged since William Stukeley drew the site and first identified its axis along the midsummer sunrise in 1720. Stukeley noticed that the Heel Stone was not precisely aligned on the sunrise. The drifting of the position of the sunrise due to the change in the obliquity of the ecliptic si ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stonedhenge
''Stonedhenge'' is the second studio album, and third album overall, by English blues rock band Ten Years After, released in February 1969 by Deram Records. It was recorded with producer Mike Vernon at London's Decca Studios in September 1968. Believing that the group's live album ''Undead'' (1968) had already perfectly captured their talents, frontman and guitarist Alvin Lee conceived ''Stonedhenge'' as a change in direction. A psychedelic blues album, it expands the group's boogie rock sound into more experimental territory, incorporating jazz, progressive pop and musique concrète styles, with deployment of studio effects, stereo panning and tape manipulation. Influences on the recording included Tod Dockstader and Canned Heat. Although largely written by Lee, the record also feature solo pieces from all four band members. The title alludes to marijuana and the ancient monument Stonehenge, the latter of which is illustrated on the psychedelic album cover. On release, '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gerald Hawkins
Gerald Stanley Hawkins (20 April 1928– 26 May 2003) was a British-born American astronomer and author noted for his work in the field of archaeoastronomy. A professor and chair of the astronomy department at Boston University in the United States, he published in 1963 an analysis of Stonehenge in which he was the first to propose that it was an ancient astronomical observatory used to predict movements of the sun and moon, and that it was used as a computer. Archaeologists and other scholars have since demonstrated such sophisticated, complex planning and construction at other prehistoric earthwork sites, such as Cahokia in the U.S. Early life and education Gerald Hawkins was born in Great Yarmouth, England and studied physics and mathematics at the University of Nottingham. In 1952 he took a PhD in radio astronomy, studying under Sir Bernard Lovell at the University of Manchester. Career In 1957 Hawkins became professor of astronomy and chairman of the department a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latitude
In geography, latitude is a geographic coordinate system, geographic coordinate that specifies the north-south position of a point on the surface of the Earth or another celestial body. Latitude is given as an angle that ranges from −90° at the south pole to 90° at the north pole, with 0° at the Equator. Parallel (latitude), Lines of constant latitude, or ''parallels'', run east-west as circles parallel to the equator. Latitude and longitude are used together as a coordinate pair to specify a location on the surface of the Earth. On its own, the term "latitude" normally refers to the ''geodetic latitude'' as defined below. Briefly, the geodetic latitude of a point is the angle formed between the vector perpendicular (or ''Normal (geometry), normal'') to the ellipsoidal surface from the point, and the equatorial plane, plane of the equator. Background Two levels of abstraction are employed in the definitions of latitude and longitude. In the first step the physical surface i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saros (astronomy)
The saros () is a period of exactly 223 synodic months, 18 years 11 days and 8 hours, that can be used to predict eclipses of the solar eclipse, Sun and lunar eclipse, Moon. One saros period after an eclipse, the Sun, Earth, and Moon return to approximately the same relative geometry, a near straight line, and a nearly identical eclipse will occur, in what is referred to as an eclipse cycle. Every eclipse has an associated saros series and all succeeding or preceding eclipses have a different saros series associated with them - as the eclipse of the same series occurs or occurred with a gap of one saros only. Solar and lunar eclipses have different saros series. A series of eclipses that are separated by one saros is called a ''saros series''. It corresponds to: *6,585.321347 solar days *18.029 years *223 synodic months *241.999 draconic months *18.999 eclipse years (38 eclipse seasons of 173.31 days) *238.992 anomalistic months *241.029 sidereal months The 19 eclipse years means ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Major Standstill
A lunar standstill or lunistice is when the Moon reaches its furthest north or furthest south point during the course of a month (specifically a tropical month of about 27.3 days). The declination (a equatorial coordinate system, celestial coordinate measured as the angle from the celestial equator, analogous to latitude) at lunar standstill varies in a cycle 18.6 years long between 18.134° (north or south) and 28.725° (north or south), due to Lunar precession#Nodal precession, lunar precession. These extremes are called the minor and major lunar standstills. The last minor lunar standstill was in October 2015, and the next one will be in 2034. The previous major lunar standstill was in 2006 and the most recent in December 2024. At this time the northern lunistice occurs when the Moon is seen in the direction of Taurus (constellation), Taurus, northern Orion (constellation), Orion, Gemini (constellation), Gemini, or sometimes the southernmost part of Auriga (constellation), A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Station Stones
The Station Stones are elements of the prehistoric monument of Stonehenge. Originally there were four stones, resembling the four corners of a rectangle that straddles the inner sarsen circle, set just inside Stonehenge's surrounding bank. Two stood on earth mounds at opposing corners, one corner broadly in the north of the site and one in the south. The mounds are called the North and South barrows although they never contained burials. The ring ditches surrounding these barrows respect the presence of Stonehenge's encircling bank indicating that they postdate this feature. The other two corners of the rectangle are occupied by the two surviving stones which are undressed sarsens. Their installation at the monument dates to sometime in Stonehenge phase 3, perhaps around 4,000 years ago. Various astronomical alignments have been suggested for the stones, all involving other features at the site. As they cannot be said with certainty to have been contemporaneous with other sto ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aubrey Holes
The Aubrey holes are a ring of 56 chalk pits at Stonehenge, named after seventeenth-century antiquarian John Aubrey. They date to the earliest phases of Stonehenge in the late fourth and early third millennium BC. Despite decades of argument and analysis, their purpose is still unknown, although an astronomical role has often been suggested. Whilst visiting the monument in 1666, Aubrey noticed five circular cavities in the ground and noted them in his records. These features were ignored or not seen by the later antiquarians to investigate the site, and it was not until the 1920s during the work carried out by Colonel William Hawley that Hawley's assistant Robert Newall identified a ring of pits he named in honour of Aubrey and his early survey. The depressions seen by Aubrey himself are more likely to have been different features from those that now bear his name. Mike Pitts in a 1981 article in ''Nature'' pointed out that the holes had been backfilled thousands of years bef ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antiquity (journal)
''Antiquity'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal covering archaeology worldwide from all periods. The editor-in-chief is Robin Skeates (University of Durham). Since 2015, the journal has been published by Cambridge University Press. The journal was established in 1927 by the British archaeologist O. G. S. Crawford and originally called ''Antiquity: A Quarterly Review of Archaeology''. The journal is owned by the Antiquity Trust, a registered charity. In October 2024, it was announced that the journal would transition to a full open access model for all research articles by 2026, with a funding initiative ensuring accessibility for all authors. ''Antiquity'' has been a long-time supporter of the Theoretical Archaeology Group conferences. Editors-in-chief The following persons are or have been editor-in-chief: *O. G. S. Crawford (1927–1957) *Glyn Daniel (1958–1986) *Christopher Chippindale (1987–1997) *Caroline Malone (1998–2002) *Martin Carver (2003–2012) *Ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stonehenge Decoded
The prehistoric monument of Stonehenge has long been studied for its possible connections with ancient astronomy. The site is aligned in the direction of the sunrise of the summer solstice and the sunset of the winter solstice. Early work Stonehenge has an opening in the henge earthwork facing northeast, and suggestions that particular significance was placed by its builders on the solstice and equinox points have followed. For example, the summer solstice Sun rose close to the Heel Stone, and the Sun's first rays shone into the centre of the monument between the horseshoe arrangement. While it is possible that such an alignment could be coincidental, this astronomical orientation had been acknowledged since William Stukeley drew the site and first identified its axis along the midsummer sunrise in 1720. Stukeley noticed that the Heel Stone was not precisely aligned on the sunrise. The drifting of the position of the sunrise due to the change in the obliquity of the ecliptic sin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aubrey Holes
The Aubrey holes are a ring of 56 chalk pits at Stonehenge, named after seventeenth-century antiquarian John Aubrey. They date to the earliest phases of Stonehenge in the late fourth and early third millennium BC. Despite decades of argument and analysis, their purpose is still unknown, although an astronomical role has often been suggested. Whilst visiting the monument in 1666, Aubrey noticed five circular cavities in the ground and noted them in his records. These features were ignored or not seen by the later antiquarians to investigate the site, and it was not until the 1920s during the work carried out by Colonel William Hawley that Hawley's assistant Robert Newall identified a ring of pits he named in honour of Aubrey and his early survey. The depressions seen by Aubrey himself are more likely to have been different features from those that now bear his name. Mike Pitts in a 1981 article in ''Nature'' pointed out that the holes had been backfilled thousands of years bef ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nature (journal)
''Nature'' is a British weekly scientific journal founded and based in London, England. As a multidisciplinary publication, ''Nature'' features Peer review, peer-reviewed research from a variety of academic disciplines, mainly in science and technology. It has core editorial offices across the United States, continental Europe, and Asia under the international scientific publishing company Springer Nature. ''Nature'' was one of the world's most cited scientific journals by the Science Edition of the 2022 ''Journal Citation Reports'' (with an ascribed impact factor of 50.5), making it one of the world's most-read and most prestigious academic journals. , it claimed an online readership of about three million unique readers per month. Founded in the autumn of 1869, ''Nature'' was first circulated by Norman Lockyer and Alexander MacMillan (publisher), Alexander MacMillan as a public forum for scientific innovations. The mid-20th century facilitated an editorial expansion for the j ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stonehenge Back Wide
Stonehenge is a prehistoric megalithic structure on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, west of Amesbury. It consists of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones, each around high, wide, and weighing around 25 tons, topped by connecting horizontal lintel stones, held in place with mortise and tenon joints, a feature unique among contemporary monuments. Inside is a ring of smaller bluestones. Inside these are free-standing trilithons, two bulkier vertical sarsens joined by one lintel. The whole monument, now ruinous, is aligned towards the sunrise on the summer solstice and sunset on the winter solstice. The stones are set within earthworks in the middle of the densest complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several hundred ''tumuli'' (burial mounds). Stonehenge was constructed in several phases beginning about 3100 BC and continuing until about 1600 BC. The famous circle of large sarsen stones were placed between 2600 B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
