Layout and Location - The Stones and the Stars: Building Scotland's Newest Megalith - page 114

and setting azimuths of the heavenly bodies at a particular site
are determined by the latitude of the observer as well as by the
declinations - which in any case have altered slightly since Neo-
lithic times, due to the change of about half a degree in the tilt of
Earth's axis (Chap. 2 ). Furthermore, star alignments such as the
rising of Altair at Callanish have changed totally since 1800 b.c.
due to the precession of the equinoxes.
A “mini-Stonehenge” would not work unless the relation-
ships of the outlying Heel Stone and Station Stones were altered,
primarily because of the latitude difference between Stonehenge
and Glasgow. If the outliers were omitted altogether, then the
structure would have no astronomical precision, even if it did
include the trilithons and the bluestone horseshoes - for which
there would be very little room inside our shrunken sarsen circle.
Because of the much greater effect of precession on star positions
over the last 4,000 years, if Thom's interpretation of Callanish was
used and the alignments were recalculated, then the result would
not be recognizable, if it worked at all, even before we started
changing solar and lunar alignments to fit Glasgow's latitude and
skyline.
The simplest solution would be just to set up a pair of mark-
ers in line with midsummer sunrise; it could be done almost any-
where with a view to the northeast, and at very low cost - a couple
of concrete posts would suffice. But the Parks Department and the
Manpower Services Commission had together agreed to employ
four people for a year, and although the start was late, there were
still nine and a half months in hand. They had a right to expect
something more ambitious, something that would be a public
attraction all year round.
Once I had made these points, at Ken's Naylor's suggestion
there was a brief flirtation with the idea that a modern monument
should commemorate 'invisible astronomy.' Paul Green, the Spe-
cial Project Manager, had begun looking into it and passed me his
copy of Fred Hoyle's Astronomy Today (1975), which he had been
reading for inspiration. I made up a list of ten objects, one for each
category (black hole, ultraviolet source, etc.), all of which passed
over Glasgow, and I began compiling a list of frequencies for a
possible radio observatory, but frankly I considered the idea a non-
starter because there would never be anything to see.