Events on Site - The Stones and the Stars: Building Scotland's Newest Megalith - page 240

F IG . 8.11 Central stone shadow on midsummer marker, midwinter 1982
of the design! In fact it was to be 13 years before I saw it. By 1989, a
large bush had grown up on precisely the line where the rising sun
should be (Fig. 8.12 ). After I mentioned that in a talk to the Aird-
rie Branch of ASTRA, the late Danny Kane (who was in the paint
business) secretly addressed the matter with a pot of creosote, and
by 1992, the bush had died back sufficiently to let the sunrise be
seen from the viewpoint on the other side of the circle (Fig. 8.13 ).
Once again, though the shadow pattern fell on the central stone
and the midwinter marker as intended (Fig. 8.14 ), the rising point
was well to the right of prediction (Fig. 8.15 ).
By this time the discerning reader will have realized what
was happening, as indeed I had. Midwinter sunrise track was
almost exactly as predicted (when first seen), the midwinter sun-
set one was about half a decree higher, and the midsummer sun-
set one about two-thirds of a degree higher. The most obvious
factor of difference is air temperature, which affects the apparent
upward displacement of the Sun's image by increasing the effect
of atmospheric refraction. With the helicopter operation pending,
pressure of time forced me to use the same average values for