Stonehenge of the Gobi Desert
Posted by pauld | Filed under Total Solar Eclipse: Live from China
After writing my first post on sunrises and moonrises I was pleased to walk from our site in the barren desert to our neighbor site, a plaza with several super sundials, an orrery, and a local “Stonehenge”.
The green of the plaza is due to plastic “grass”. But football is not played on this “astroturf”, instead science exploration is done here.
The “Gobi Stonehenge” is made with a central pillar where a viewer stands and 6 pillars that mark the positions of sunrise and sunset on the equinoxes and the solstices. There are also pillars to mark due north and south. When the sun passes over the south pillar it marks local solar noon.
The shape of an observatory like this one depends upon the latitude, and my caculations show that the excellent Chinese astronomer who designed this one did a superb job.
The local science guides took me around the site, I was the first american tourist to visit this spot. They were wonderful enthusiastic volunteers, well trained in astronomy. I learned later that they were impressed that their very first visitor could do the calculations to confirm the shape of this stonehenge in his head. Of course it helped that I had taught a lesson on this very topic and published it on my web site: Build your own ancient observatory.
Tags: observatory, sundial, sunrise, sunset
Watch the Sunrise and Moonrise
Posted by pauld | Filed under Total Solar Eclipse: Live from China
On July 21, 2008 the full moon rose at sunset. The next morning the sun rose over one hundred lunar diameters away. The full moon rises near where the sun rose 6 months ago, so in the summer when the sun rises at its furthest north along the horizon, the full moon rises at its furthest south. Observers keeping track of the position of the rising sun and moon note that the positions of the moonrise and sunrise have been racing toward each other and that on August 1, 2008 the sun and moon will rise at nearly the same position.
On August 1, 2008 the moon will be new and will rise eclipsing the sun near Alut, Northwest Territories Canada. The moon will set eclipsing the sun near Xian China.
In the late afternoon of August 1, I will be with the Exploratorium eclipse team watching the moon totally eclipse the sun at 4:08 PM China time (11:08 PM Universal time) The moon will eclipse the sun for 2 minutes. We will send live images of the eclipse out to the world.
Ancient peoples marked the positions of the rising and setting sun and moon, the marked positions are preserved in monuments such as Stonehenge and other woodhenges. I suspect that the observers from long ago knew more about the rising and setting positions than most modern day people.
If you live near the path of this eclipse do not miss a chance to see the sun rendezvous with the moon.
If you cannot see the eclipse live, watch the video on the Exploratorium website or watch from the Exploratorium sim in Second Life.
No matter where you are don’t miss a chance to watch sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset.
