Events on Site - The Stones and the Stars: Building Scotland's Newest Megalith - page 245

F IG . 8.17 Major lunar standstill, northerly set, prediction, above the White
Horse Distillery sign (Working photograph by Gavin Roberts, drawing by
author)
spurious because the claimed accuracy can't be achieved by obser-
vation alone. Ah, but it can. Sighthill would demonstrably have
been much more accurate if it had been aligned by eye.
The lunar events were eventually to make the point still more
strongly. As explained above, since the Moon's orbit is inclined at
about 5° to the ecliptic, which is the plane of Earth's orbit pro-
jected onto the sky, and since the Moon's orbital plane precesses
around the sky with a period of 18.61 years, during that period
there are two 'standstills' when moonrise and moonset reach their
furthest north and south for 9.3 years. We had just missed a minor
standstill when the Astronomy Project was set up, so there were
to be no lunar events at Sighthill until September-October 1987.
Then we would get four events in a single month, with the Moon
rising and setting at its furthest south in September, then furthest
north 2 weeks later, at the major standstill.
In the 1986 article, I wrote, “Weather, be kind to us then!”
But it was not to be. Reckoning that to the accuracy of my circle,
6 months either side of the event would still be close enough, I went
up there, alone or with friends, on each occasion of the 48 when