HEADINGS :- / Carrowkeel Cairn Complex / Cairns G and H / Azimuth 313° and its Significance-------- / Tracking the Moon and Sun / Capella to the Rescue / Fire / Descent of the Gods / Other Considerations / Cairns B,E and K / Cassiopeia and Cygnus / Miosgan Meadhbha(Queen Maeve's Cairn) Knocknarea / Cairn E as a Court Cairn / A Complete Surprise / A Ground Plan in Mind? / Dating the Site / Intra-Cairn Alignments / Preliminary Findings / Conclusions
An added difficulty of tracking this Moon in question concerns the fact that it only appears between Azimuths 312° - 322° for certain days a year, also it disappears from this range for a 9 - 10 year period while it completes its Metonic cycle (18.61 years). Our Neolithic observers would have keenly noted that the Moon's setting was in close proximity to the sunset at the Summer Solstice time. However since the Sun only appears at Azimuth 313 ° for 14 -15 days of the year, how did they nail down the passage alignments.
Did they observe terrestrial elevation points in relation to sight-lining the Sun? If they did, what guarantee would they have of good weather/atmospheric conditions? What about the Sun's disk size in their sight lines? It is known that the temperature in Neolithic times was 2 ° Celcius warmer than today.There was a good possibility they had regular seasons. What would have happened if in deciding that they wanted to nail down the Moon at the Summer Solstice points they found that it was setting further west on its South declination extreme travel? Clearly there is one terrestrial marker in their sights , Doomore hillock (116m) is 6.624kms ( 4.14 statute miles) from Cairns G,H and K. I measured Geodetic lines from Carrowkeel to Doomore hillock and got an Azimuth of 312.3 ° This is the closest horizon line object to the Summer Solstice sunset point.This still leaves the question of time for accurate alignment.This may have been sufficient for their needs but I'm inclined to believe that they had another marker, celestial in nature to guide them.
As the 6th brightest star (mag 0.2) in the night sky, Capella in the constellation Auriga, slides it way into Azimuth 312 ° at a certain Neolithic time frame. This star could now give its observers a longer tracking period to fix the moon's orbital setting points. From mid December to mid May Capella set at the Sun's standstill point in this locale. It could very well have acted as a predictor for the Sun's Summer Solstice period and helped refine and give accuracy to the whole undertaking.The question most readers will ask is how did they do this at night when Doomore Hillock may not be possible to see in the dark?