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
Would there be other celestial stars to align G and H to? In fact budding astronomers would point out Regulus a 1.2 mag. star in the constellation Leo as a possibility. Certainly Regulus is on the ecliptic line and usually either precedes or succeedes the Sun's position. Capella has a brighter image than Regulus and allows us to pin down a possible construct time for both G and H. You can't do that with Regulus because it isn't a starting event, it doesn't 'arrive' on the ecliptic line, Capella does.
Wouldn't it be possible to sight line the sun's rays by shadows? Certainly that's a possibility and is considered the standard method of shadow aligning, but here I have another purpose for a nighttime alignment which we'll see later on in our proceedings.
Now we can turn to our stellar tracking cairns. Since stars move
slowly across the sky background, if the ancients knew about
constellations or if they focused in on a group of stars, it almost
certainly would be in response to a need to fix a direction. These
group of cairns fix an azimuth range between 326° and 344°.
This area of the sky horizon does not hold any solar or lunar bodies
but a vast pendulum of motion towards the zenith pole, or true North.
Cairn B is situated on top of its cairn and not at the base where the
remains of a kerb of stones reside.(see below)
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These were the two main constellations focused on, with some input from Leo also, notably Denebola. From inside the chambers you would not get to see Arcturus in the Bootes constellation or Vega in Lyra, two very bright stars indeed. They travel in an altitude over 8° or more but could be viewable close to the passageway entrance. It seems that a 'fixed' direction was chosen, to lock on to Equinox times as the Neolithic observers knew it. Nearly all the stars in these constellations are sub first magnitude, not very bright but because of Carrowkeel's lofty elevation, only Knocknarea's tabletop mountain is higher, the atmosphere would be clearer to aid faint star viewing. Native Indians in the U.S. used to track north constellations such as these for their directional purposes.
From insideCairn K(see below) you can clearly see a precision piece
of engineering skill the builders incorporated into its passage
alignment. Here, clearly seen with the naked eye, is the enormous
Queen Maeve's cairn atop Knocknarea
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the above drawings show. In this way a sight check for each placement
of stones can be precisely mapped out.
In Cairn E the alignment is considered 2 ° west of K's however I suspected that it too aligned perfectly with Maeve's cairn as a right hand entrance orthostat is considerably tilted into the passage as is its left counterpart. Is this a repair job from the past? A cross lintel holds them apart, but the lintel is too short for the span and narrows down the field of view, which, when I measured from the floor of the orthostats in question, gave me Maeve cairn's azimuth exactly!! Why the curious signposting to this huge unopened tomb?
One very important reason concerns the Cassiopeia constellation. One of its stars ,Caph, the brighest, (mag. 2.4) at the western edge of the constellation lies on a plane or meridian from Polaris the North star in today's era. In Neolithic times ,at this latitude, Cassiopeia does not serve as any equinoctial line, however Denebola, in Leo does, for the Vernal Equinox in their time.(see fig. below) (Note5)
What about the Autumnal equinox? Well ,there is a different set of markers for Autumn. Sure enough, the 1st and 4th brightest stars in the night sky, happily fulfill that role. Vega, in Lyra, transits azimuth 332.5° on October 26th. of a distant era to our own. Its altitude however is 15° above the horizon. So an observer would sit themselves just inside the entrance of Cairn K, and an asociate would be outside in front of the cairn to look between Knocknarea and over Cairn K. There they would see Sirius at altitude 5° 48' on counter azimuth 152.5° right over Cairn K. 15 to 20 minutes later, our observer within the cairn K entrance would see Vega transit 332.5° in line with the outside observer and the cairn. Then this would mark the Autumnal Equinox time and mark harvest time for the year.
Now as we can see we have 3 markers spacing out , The summer Solstice point, and Spring and Vernal Equinoxes. However the only discernable marker for the Winter Solstice point,appears to be Spica a rather brilliant star (1.2 mag.) in Virgo, which precedes the sun rising by about one hour. Again Its difficult to know if Neolithics could spot this star.
