Swinside and Sighthill in Stellarium

I’ve just made two new stone circle landscapes for Stellarium, the free planetarium software. It’s been quite a while since I created a Stellarium landscape, and I’d forgotten quite how much fiddling around was involved. It does become quite time-consuming, but it’s very satisfying when you do get it to work. This time round, I used two programs that I hadn’t used before, and I actually found the process much easier than previous attempts. There are two main parts to making a landscape – the first is to create a panoramic image from a series of photographs taken from the … Continue reading Swinside and Sighthill in Stellarium

Machrie Moor landscape for Stellarium

After visiting a client on Arran a couple of weeks ago, I took the opportunity for a quick visit to Machrie Moor, which is about the closest thing Scotland has to a megalithic theme park. There are at least five sites in the complex, all very close together but of very different designs, as though the builders were experimenting to find out what worked best. One of the sites in particular has some spectacularly tall megaliths of a wonderful red sandstone – you can see some of these in the distance if you look to the north-east in this Stellarium … Continue reading Machrie Moor landscape for Stellarium

Callanish landscape for Stellarium

Ever since I saw the major southern standstill of the moon at Callanish on the Western Isles in 2006 (see my article The Song of the Low Moon), I’ve been wanting to recreate it using  the open-source astronomy program Stellarium. It’s taken longer than anticipated, but that dream has now been fulfilled. Earlier this year, I was working on a show in Stornoway, and took the opportunity to drive out to the stones one morning when things were quiet. Nobody was about and I had the site to myself. I took GPS readings at the northern end of the avenue … Continue reading Callanish landscape for Stellarium

Sighthill Solstice Sunset

I managed to attend Duncan’s talk about the Sighthill stones on the summer solstice, followed up by a walk up to the circle to see the sunset. I’ve certainly never seen so many folk at the circle before, and we were blessed with clear skies for the event. I was keen to see how the real thing compared with my Stellarium landscape, and was pleasantly surprised to see that it was pretty accurate. Here’s a picture of things in Stellarium: …and here’s the real thing, taken looking over the centre stone, which of course you don’t see in the Stellarium … Continue reading Sighthill Solstice Sunset

Good Heavens … astronomer bids to rejuvenate stone circle

Good Heavens … astronomer bids to rejuvenate stone circle – Herald Scotland | News | Home News. 2 Jun 2010 It was created in the late 1970s to mirror the rise and fall of the moon and sun across Glasgow on a site of ancient astronomical interest. Now efforts are being made to rejuvenate the Sighthill Stone Circle, created by amateur astronomer and science writer Duncan Lunan, who brought Britain’s first authentically alligned stone circle in more than 3000 years to Glasgow’s inner city. More than 30 years later, Lunan hopes to revive interest in the stone circle, which was … Continue reading Good Heavens … astronomer bids to rejuvenate stone circle