Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2002 May 9 
Posted on 05/09/2002 5:10:32 AM PDT by petuniasevan
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2002 May 9
Explanation: Stonehenge, four thousand year old monument to the Sun, provides an appropiate setting for this delightful snapshot of the Sun's children gathering in planet Earth's sky. While the massive stone structure dates from around 2000 B.C., this arrangement of the visible planets was recorded only a few days ago on the evening of May 4th, 2002 A.D. Bright Jupiter stands highest above the horizon at the upper left. A remarkable, almost equilateral triangle formed by Saturn (left), Mars (top), and Venus (right) is placed just above the stones near picture center. Fighting the glow of the setting sun, Mercury can be spotted closest to the horizon, below and right of the planetary triad. Still easy to enjoy for casual sky gazers, this photogenic and slowly shifting planetary grouping will be joined by a young crescent Moon beginning Monday, May 13.
Camera: Pentax 67 with 45mm f/4 lens working at f/4
Film: Fuji NPZ 800 120 format
Mount: Fixed tripod
Exposure: 10 seconds
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| It is one of the eeriest and most mysterious ancient monuments discovered in Britain. A massive oak tree, stuck upside down with its great spread of roots pointing skywards, stands surrounded by a palisade-like circle of oak trunks. And it has just emerged from the sea. A wooden relative of Stonehenge, thought to be some sort of altar, it has been revealed by the shifting sands of Norfolk, where it has lain burried and perserved for thousands of years. A beachcomber alerted archaeologists, who started excavating in October. The site, on the lonely coast at Holme-next-the-Sea nea Hunstanton, is almost certainly ritual and probably to do with death. Within its oval ring of 54 posts is the iverted oak tree with its roots, "like a table with fingers", says Dr. Francis Pryor, president of the Council for British Archaeology. He believes it is very likely to have been some sort of altar. The tree-temple - if that is what it is - has been uncovered by tidal erosion. It is thought to have been constructed in the early Bronze Age, between 2,000 and 1,200 BC, which would make it almost a contemporary of Stonehenge. The site, says Dr. Pryor, is the most extraordinary archaeological discovery he has ever seen and it must be preserved. " I was staggered when I first saw it," he said. "I had goose pimples. It really was like stepping back 4,000 years. It is of enormous importance." But unless difficult decisions are taken soon about preserving it, it is likely to be destroyed by the action of the tides within two years. No decision can be made until the site is precisely dated. Carbon-dating of the wood is being carried out. An excavation led by Mark Brennand of Norfolk County Councils Archaeology Unit suggests that the tree-temple was constructed on swampy ground some way inland, which the sea covered at a later date. Mr. Brennand believes the purpose of the site was probably excarnation - the practice of exposing the bodies of the dead so that the flesh rotted more quickly, thus, it was thought, speeding the spirit on its way to the afterlife. "I really do find it eerie and profoundly moving," he said. "All the hard-bitten archaeologists who saw it out there felt the same. You're directly in the presence of the past at a very personal level." Dr. Pryor added that for our ancestors, oak was a special wood: "The inverted oak is not just utilitarian, a simple way of making an altar. It is a very complex symbolic statement. Perhaps a little sinister. It is the world turned upside down." |
Graewoulf come home &;-)
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