Situated above your head as you make your way into the passage to get to the cruciform chamber that is Newgrange, you will see a 'roofbox' like aperture.On the outside of the mound it is square shaped. From inside the passageway looking out the entrance it turns into a rectangle and this is because of its complex construction. Over RS1(roofslab 1) and between RS2 lies a slit opening. It measures, physically 20 - 25cms in vertical height and is 1 metre in width. This gives it a max. height to width ratio 1: 4. The Roofbox is approximately 1.2 metres in depth but from the outside will have a height to width ratio of 1: 1caused by a tapering of slabs from the roof area.(NOTE1) When Dr. O'Kelly first discovered the roofbox he decided to test for the sun's rays entering the passage by setting up an observation team inside the chamber on Dec.21, 1969. He recorded the time and the width the sunbeam was when it spread itself across the chamber floor. The next year he brought in Dr. Jon Patrick of Bolton street surveying department, in Dublin, to see if the roofbox was indeed delibrately designed to capture sunlight on the winter solstice.(NOTE 2) In the table below I have laid out the tracking of the sunlight based on Dr. O'Kelly's measurements against Dr. Patrick's survey parameters of elevation and azimuth from the back chamber wall.

We can read the details from the left across the table for altitude and azimuth for Dr. Patrick's survey, then at the bottom of the table are Dr. O'Kelly's observations converted to also altitude and azimuth readings. Elevation is interchangeable with altitude as they mean the same thing. The azimuth range according to Dr. Patrick is from 133° 42' to 138° 24' with a variance of +/- 15 '. We can see that sunrise occurred at 8:54 am GMT, that day at 133° 18' azimuth and the last rays at 137° 36'. They are slightly out of range by 09', a small variance, but nonetheless complies very well with Dr. Patrick's range measurements. The declination of -23° 26' is also within the range -22° 58' to -25° 53'. Now let's look at the figures for the altitude. The sun rises at 0° 59' when the sun's upper limb comes up over the horizon level at 0° 51'. Dr. Patrick states clearly that/ 'light rays will not enter the chamber when the elevation (read altitude) exceeds 1° 40'. Extraordinary as it may seem, according to Dr O' Kelly's observations the last rays leaving the tomb occur at 3° 00'. It is not stated here whether the last rays get cut off from the chamber proper or the passageway and therefore we have to assume Dr. O' Kelly meant the chamber as I'm sure he would have mentioned, if it was the passage. When I first noticed this (read the green coloured figures above), I rechecked the figures again, same result. I rechecked a number of times. Impossible as it seems somehow the sun's altitude jumps after it complies with Dr. Patrick's sunrise figure, an extra degree or so. I thought at first it maybe a result of precession or something, but no, the altitude figures do not corrolate. That left me with one conclusion, either Dr. Patrick's figures were incorrect or Dr. O'Kelly's, one or the other. These were professionals in their respective fields of study, not inclined to make mistakes and strange as it seems I concluded they did not make an error, either of them. How so you ask? Well, believe it or not, the error appears to lie within the text of Dr. Patrick's report. The omission of a single word alters the entire meaning of a sentence. 'light rays will not enter the chamber when the elevation (read altitude) exceeds 1° 40' '. That statement should read = 'light rays will not enter the chamber when the elevation (read altitude) DIFFERENCE exceeds 1° 40'.A minor cosmetic change, a typographical error, a simple omission but it is possible that this is the only way to reconcile the respective figures of both men. Now the altitude is within Dr. O'Kelly's range from 0° 59' to 3° 00'(chamber). You will notice that Dr. O'Kelly's top range of altitude is 3° 00' and not 2° 31' (0° 51' + 1° 40') for Dr. Patrick. Could the 29 minutes remainder be the Sun's apparent arc space diameter in aphelion? (its very close). So what you say? Well this means that the height/width ratio is now changed to 1: 2.16 (based on sky window degrees) and that can't be right. If the azimuth range is in compliance then the altitude range must obey the 1 : 4 (cm measurement) ratio proportion. Altitude measurement is a complete circular measure from the North to the South of the earth AND back to the North point again. This circle intersects the azimuth circle at right angles. The azimuth circle skirts the globe from the East to the West and back to the East again. This is quite a puzzle, one factor to include is the fact that the sun occupies arc space because its a solid disc. It occupies 32 minutes of arc(perihelion) in the sky.This affects the timing of observations of the sun's rays because there will be a time interval between when the upper sun's limb disappears and when the lower trailing limb clears the roofbox. Should that be taken into account? It should, however, its complicated by the fact that 2 of the passageway orthostats (R21 and L 20)

are leaning into the passage and form an inverted apex near the roof. This shapes the sun's beam that gives the finger shape to the rays when they spread across the chamber floor and acts as an artificial roofbox barrier to light superimposed over the real roofbox. We have to maintain the 1: 4 ratio therefore the altitude range must be between 0° 59' and 2° 12' at the position of the chamber back wall. Obviously this solar mid winter solstice phenomenon was observed indirectly by the Neolithics who constructed Newgrange. You cannot look directly at the sun. I asked myself a question, what if you reduced the sun's disc to a point of light.