Sanctuary
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Winter Solstice Plans
Dec 12, 2014, 23:07
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Where to this year then?
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goffik
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Re: Winter Solstice Plans
Dec 13, 2014, 10:37
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We'll be doing the usual thing of celebrating a couple of days later by having a load of family members over for a vegetarian feast, whilst watching the expressions of total and utter delight on our kids' faces as they open vast quantities of presents! Then maybe pulling a cracker or 2, having a glass of wine or 2. And possibly watching the Christmas Doctor Who. In a nice, warm house. And maybe some whiskey.
Better than sitting around a load of mouldy old stones, on damp, freezing ground, in the middle of the sub-zero night waiting for the poxy sun to rear its head through the fog/cloud/rain... ;)
Or is it? ;)
Happy Christmas!*
(* Is it still too soon to be uttering such festive good wishes?)
G x
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Sanctuary
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Re: Winter Solstice Plans
Dec 13, 2014, 11:30
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goffik wrote: We'll be doing the usual thing of celebrating a couple of days later by having a load of family members over for a vegetarian feast, whilst watching the expressions of total and utter delight on our kids' faces as they open vast quantities of presents! Then maybe pulling a cracker or 2, having a glass of wine or 2. And possibly watching the Christmas Doctor Who. In a nice, warm house. And maybe some whiskey.
Better than sitting around a load of mouldy old stones, on damp, freezing ground, in the middle of the sub-zero night waiting for the poxy sun to rear its head through the fog/cloud/rain... ;)
Or is it? ;)
Happy Christmas!*
(* Is it still too soon to be uttering such festive good wishes?)
G x
Haaaaaaaa you should have been with me yesterday morning on Bodmin Moor re-exposing fallen and buried stones from a stone circle after a night of horrendous rain-fall and in driving hail. Well, someone's gotta do it :-)
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Dave1982
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Re: Winter Solstice Plans
Dec 13, 2014, 16:35
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Here's hoping for a bright sunny sunrise over Stonehenge on a lovely clear frosty morning, so that I can get a bearing from the pine post holes, and a couple of dozen pics of the rising sun to give a rough measurement of it's angle to the horizon.
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Sanctuary
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Re: Winter Solstice Plans
Dec 14, 2014, 08:50
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Sanctuary wrote: Where to this year then?
21st or 22nd?
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/stonehenge/winter-solstice-2014/?lang=en
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nigelswift
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Re: Winter Solstice Plans
Dec 14, 2014, 09:37
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"The solstice is traditionally celebrated at the sunrise closest to the time when the sun is stationary before beginning its transit to the north or south. This year this occurs late on 21 December, hence the winter solstice celebrations take place at sunrise on 22 December."
That's all a bit muddling. The actual solstice is at 23.03 GMT on the 21st but the traditional solstice, if you mean a traditional old Stonehenge solstice would be whatever was observable wouldn't it? Earliest sunset, latest sunrise or longest night? None would have been easily visible, i.e. measurable, but it does seem the place was designed to celebrate sunset - the earliest one presumably - which isn't on the 21st or 22nd is it? (George?)
Is EH playing along with a mistaken understanding by Druids of what the monument was most likely to have been designed to observe? Shouldn't they tell 'em to line up their beliefs with the evidence? (And save a lot of overtime payments for EH staff) ;)
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tiompan
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Re: Winter Solstice Plans
Dec 14, 2014, 10:09
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Nigel ,
if it’s actual Julian calendar dates for the solstice then it becomes interesting .These days it’s 21-22 Dec. but because of the very small differences in the Julian calendar year (365.25) and the Tropical year(365.24219) (the time from one solstice to the next ,there are fancier more accurate definitions but that’s the basic ) it means that the solstice date in 2500 bc fell on 8 th January .
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nigelswift
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Re: Winter Solstice Plans
Dec 14, 2014, 10:47
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Fascinating.
I'm prepared to forgive EH and the Druids for following the backwards drift of the solar solstice relative to calendars, as it makes more sense to look at where the sun is than where the calendar is.
BUT:
For EH to be letting people into an astronomical observatory to observe what the builders built it to observe, they need to put themselves in the shoes of the Man on the Salisbury Plain around about now, armed only with eyeballs and sticks, assuming it hadn't yet been built. Which sunsets (and other evidence indicates it is sunsets) would he observe as the most "extreme" - given the actual horizon he would most probably have experienced thousands of years ago?
Maybe I'm being a bit pernickity but I've still to get over this https://heritageaction.wordpress.com/2013/01/17/mystic-meg-to-be-given-advisory-role-at-stonehenge/
What with that, and the fact they holding a sunrise event for no understandable reason and they spend a lot of my money on it, they need to put it on a more convincing basis IMO.
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spencer
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Re: Winter Solstice Plans
Dec 14, 2014, 11:10
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Well done, Roy
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Sanctuary
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Re: Winter Solstice Plans
Dec 14, 2014, 12:05
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spencer wrote: Well done, Roy
Thanks...will report on that when completed.
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