Thursday 2 June 2016

Lunar standstill at Tomnaverie Stone Circle



We visited this stone circle when we were staying in Tarland in Aberdeenshire. I wondered what the bit in the middle picture meant about the limit of the movement of the Moon. It turns out that it is called a lunar standstill and was not an unusual thing for a stone circle to mark (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_standstill) I'm finding it quite hard to understand. Try this video of the event at the Calanais stone circle on Lewis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e98oObp4nwM I don't think that the analysis is scientific and you may want to take some of the comments with a pinch of salt but it seems like a reasonable visual recording of the event. The film shows the Moon crawling along the horizon so I guess this is what they mean for Tomnaverie. I had never heard of this and will need to get back to my 3D rotational mechanics to understand what is actually going on!