The news that the Voyager Spacecraft has left the solar system and entered interstellar space fills me with happiness. Launched in 1977 – the year I was born – this little tendril of technology has extended our senses to the planets and now to the edge of our celestial neighborhood. You can actually hear a change in pitch from Voyager’s sensors as it passes the interstellar boundary. It senses, and communicates.
Rising above the fields and pastures of County Meath near the town of Old Castle stand some of the most impressive megalithic structures in Ireland. Some 24 rocky mounds dot the tops of the highest hills of the Slieve-na-Calliagh range. The largest of these were described in the 19th Century as passage tombs, but it is now clear that they served a far more interesting purpose, as astronomical clocks.
Some 5,000 years ago, the stone age people living in this place went to great effort to construct monuments that track the apparent motion of the sun as it rises and sets. They carried bright white quartz from a distance to face the monuments, which must have stood out as beacons to the surrounding countryside on a moonlit night. Continue reading The Equinox at Loughcrew Cairns
