Geek News Central

Stonehenge II

The New Zealand government gave a NZ$56,500 grant to have a second, more up-to-date, and easier to understand Stonehenge built in Aotearoa, about an hour’s drive north of Wellington. The aim of the project is to help people rediscover the basics of astronomy.

From this BBC news article:  “You can read as much as you like in a book how the sun and the moon work, how people use stars to navigate by, or to foretell the seasons,” says Richard Hall, president of the Phoenix Astronomical Society which built the henge. “You stand here amongst the henge and you show people exactly how it works. Somehow it simplifies it and it becomes that much more easy to understand,” he said.

 Set into a tiled mosaic that runs out from the obelisk along the meridian is a 10m analemma, the figure of eight pattern that the path of sun traces over a year. Outside the circle of the henge stand six heel stones, the markers for the rising and setting points of the sun at solstice and equinox. To make the henge truly of Aotearoa (the Maori name for New Zealand), the astronomers have ensured that their creation marks the stars and constellations that Polynesian navigators used on their epic voyages across the Pacific Ocean, and they have also incorporated Maori lore.

Exit mobile version