Bill Hawkins <[email protected]> wrote: > The passage grave at New Grange, Ireland, is one of those astronomical > wonders where the rising sun at winter solstice shines down a relatively > long tunnel to shine on carved stone at the far wall of a chamber. > > We know that solstice has the shortest day and the longest night. > > How'd they know that?
I'll abstain from answering the last question, but I'm more interested in a different question: from what I understand, the exact shape of the analemma depends on the misalignment between the line of apses (aphelion and perihelion of Earth's slightly eccentric orbit) and the solstices and equinoxes defined by Earth's obliquity. These things do change very slowly over the course of millennia, don't they? Isn't that change significant enough that the correct stone alignment would be different between today and 5000 y ago? If they got it right 5000 y ago for their epoch, why does it still work now? Hasn't the analemma shifted far enough to break the alignment? Just wondering. MS _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
