99% of the alignments have at least one hit for the Moon and at least two hits in 98% of the cases. Its obvious our ancestors were laying out a lunar tracking site to determine amongst other things the standstill or solstice points of the moon.They discovered the lunar extreme southerly major standstills(azimuths 163° & 202°) plus if you add two westerly standing stones, ie west of Carnbane West in the Mullagh area, we get the lunar equinox day at altitude 5° and azimuth 85° to cairn M. The most lunar hits occur at the first standing stone the furthest away from the ridge and directly perpendicular to it. This lunar tracking will operate today as it did millennia ago except you cannot see Cairn Y on Patrickstown hill because of forestry growth on the hill top. Now, by this method, we can generally establish a genesis date for phase 3 of Loughcrew (large cairns). How? By noting a very strange secondary tracking of particular stars from the standing stones. Firstly, the planet Mars is hit by all except one alignment and goes retrograde Jun 23 - Jul 29 in 3300BC. This is strange because Mars achieves it retrograde 'stance' right over cairn T from the first standing stone. Secondly and equally amazing, certain key stars are 'fixed' by these alignments. All the stars in Orion except Alnilim and Mintaka get hit. Is this purely coincidental? Well at the very apex of this constellation is Bellatrix ,Betelguese and Meissa forming a triangle. Its Meissa that got me wondering. In order to hit Meissa an alignment had to be just one degree shorter in altitude than another one. Uncanny it seems. There may have been other, now fallen, broken or reused, standing stones that aligned to the remaining 2 stars in Orion. When I saw this I truly wished it were another constellation altogether because skepticism will be rampant here. But make no mistake, of 10 stars hit , 6 belong to Orion, the others being low brightness isolated stars from other constellations. That's 6 out of the 8 main stars in the Orion constellation, 75%.Still convinced it's coincidence?
So ,by this method, and using precession, the Orion stars would be out of alignment to the stones 30 years before/after 3300BC. In other words Phase Three, by astronomical means, will give us 3300BC +/- 30.
In order to narrow this down I incremented years before and after 3300BC in batches of 50 years to see how frequently the stars aligned and found a dramatic drop off before 3350BC and after 3250BC. There is remaining, a single standing stone, on the South low ground and its aligned perfectly with true North through cairn T. The only bright star to transit over this point would be Vega in Lyra in 2300BC. So perhaps, this stone was a late addition to the ground observatory to fix cardinal axes points. Of the two westerly standing stones, one situated at 140m elevation, locks on to a retrograde Jupiter over cairn D in 3300BC(a retrograde Jupiter will only occur every 84 years to a return position) and another standing stone ,the highest elevated at 197m, on the northfacing slope of cairn Y, also tracks Beleguese in Orion over cairn L.The best approach to untangling the alignments is to follow Professor Cooney's 3 phase sequence of site construction. Alignments for all determinable cairns are shown in the table below.
| CAIRN | PHASE | RIDGE | CENTRAL | AZIMUTH RANGE |
| V | One | East | 298.5° | 298° - 299° |
| R2 | One | East | 47° | N/A |
| U | One | East | 107.5° | 107° - 108° |
| 'eye' | Two | West | 81.5° | 78° - 85° |
| H | Two | West | 112.5° | 110° - 115° |
| S | Two | East | 296° | 294° - 298° |
| F | Two | West | 82.5° | 80° - 85° |
| L | Three | West | 109° + 117° | 105° - 119° |
| T | Three | East | 94° + 102° | 84° - 105° |
This is a fairly good but not perfect interpretation of the orientation points because many of the smaller cairns are too ruined to ascertain proper orientation. I've shown two central azimuths for both cairns T & L. This is because both cairns have curving passageways and therefore have at least double focusing points for the solar and lunar luminaries. It will be immediately noticable that many remaining alignments point to the East of the sky covering from 47° azimuth(isolated) to 119°.The most frequent azimuths are 84°, 95°, 96°, 107°, and 108°. The first 3 of these azimuths relate to the Moon's nodal axis. The only cairn that fixes to the true East azimuth is Cairn T, on Carnbane East. Because we have tentatively determined a genesis phase 3 start date we can now state reasonably the shifted equinox and solstice points of the Sun. The Summer Solstice peak was on July 23, Winter Solstice peak, Jan 21, Vernal (Spring) equinox Apr 21, and Autumnal Equinox Oct 19 for 3300BC +/- 30.These are important gauges that we can use to re-establish original purpose and intention to the alignments. It should be noted Martin Brennan and Jack Roberts as well as Jean Mc Mann have done considerable work to outline the astronomy and ground archaeology of the Loughcrew complex. Here I hope to add more information to the mix.
Situated on a grassy knoll, presiding over some of the lower level cairns on Carnbane West, Cairn 'eye', projects its short passageway to frame Cairn T on Carnbane East. Like most of the cairns here at this site, cairn 'eye' has Megalithic iconography in the form of various zigzag lines, radial arrays, spirals etc just like at Bru Na Boinne 38 Kms away. Today you can perch yourself inside the inner chamber which has 6 side recesses and a tiny back chamber measuring 3x3x3 ft.The whole passageway and chambers run approx. 6 metres. Because the chamber and passageway align with Cairn T, I was able to ascertain, by geodetic azimuth, a central line of 81.5°. It would seem that because of the equinox times back then if a full moon occurred approx. 70 days before Vernal or Autumnal equinoxes then the next full moon could be a potential eclipsed one. It seems that outside this 70 day limit the cairn cannot function this way.(see end of article for more detailed ideas on lunar eclipse cycles) This is similiar to the Knowth Site one complex. Same thing happens there (see my Knowth article). I've laid out yet another short table to show you various dates for sample full moons as it works here. This cairn will still work today as it did millennia ago.
In the table above, not all the incidences of the full moon show
eclipse potential. It would appear that in Phase Two, some of
the cairns did not pick up all the relevant potential eclipses for their narrow
azimuth ranges. The Neoliths would have found that some potential eclipses did
not show up inside the chambers, therefore it seems logical that
additional cairns were built to cover the ones missing, these became
known as the large cairns ,D, L,T, and Y of Phase Three construction.
Only when Phase Three was completed did the worshippers have
all the relevant angles covered for all potential rising lunar eclipses around equinox
times.This would also help to explain two mysteries with these cairns,
one, why didn't the subsequent later phase builders destroy the
already existing small cairns to avail of better spacing?
And two, why is there some cairns that double up on the azimuths
of other cairns and even overlap them or are one or two degrees
azimuth in difference to adjacent cairns, more reason to obliterate
them, no?. Well now it can be understood to have a COMPREHENSIVE
TRACKING OF THE POTENTIAL OCCURANCE OF LUNAR ECLIPSES with all cairns contributing to this
factor. It would seem that our ancestor worshippers paid homage
to a red-orange orb that probably mystified them and heralded
a ritual time, for what, sacrifice, libations? It now becomes clearer
why they disregarded the dominance of the sun during equinox times at this site, they
simply used it to predict potential lunar eclipses around that time.
Because, if theSun passed over the lunar nodal axes, then the next or prior
full moon would be eclipsed.Therefore the sun was relegated to
A SECONDARY FEATURE of their siting relevance. If you don't believe me
look at Cairn L on Carnbane West. Its passage is clearly aligned to
capture potential lunar eclipses. The right recess is especially given over to the sun
illuminating it as its orb rises over cairn M as Martin Brennan and
Jack Roberts have discovered.Let's look at another graph that
shows potential lunar eclipses for 5 consecutive years.(see below)
I couldn't fit in all the full moons as things get cluttered up there.But you
can see how the full moons range from 46° to 148°. Normally
in a given year you will have two annular lunar eclipses around the
equinox times.
Our remaining cairns cover up to approx.119° however
we must not forget our plethora of standing stones on the north
side of the ridge. These help to take up remaining full moons up to
the upper limit of 148°. The only gap appears between 48°
and 78°.That leaves us with 67% of the potential rising full moons covered
between the standing stones and hill top cairns. Obviously we are
missing the remaining 30° gap which could easily be explained
as stones and/or cairns destroyed.