Events on Site - The Stones and the Stars: Building Scotland's Newest Megalith - page 253

F IG . 8.27 ( a ) Rigel rising prediction. Drawing by Richard Robertson, from
Fig. 8.26b working photograph. ( b ) Looking east towards Townhead Church
before midsummer sunrise, 1989. Author in middle distance (Photo by Ian
Downie)
Tounheid Kirk's awaa
The toun council caa'd it doun
Still the steeple stauns.
After Paul Benson tried to photograph the star at rising with-
out success, in 1986 I wrote, “Because of the lights and haze of the
city, no-one has seen Rigel rise over the marker; and since the ris-
ing points of the stars change fairly rapidly, due to the wobble in
the Earth's axis known as Precession of the Equinoxes, it may be
that no-one ever will [ 3 ].”
That proved unduly pessimistic. As with the clearing of the
industrial pollution over the Clyde Valley in the early 1980s, in