Stonehenge and the Moon

Unlocking the secrets of lunar standstill

- Jennifer Wexler

A rare lunar event this year is uncovering mysterious links between the iconic ancient monument and the Moon, as archaeologist Jennifer Wexler explains

Two years ago, I was standing in the car park at the Stonehenge Visitor Centre on a cold, clear December evening. I had only recently started working for English Heritage and it was a few weeks before the winter solstice. The Sun was slowly setting, a large, bright-red sphere on the western horizon. Just as it dipped below the horizon, I turned and was shocked to see another giant red orb rising above the eastern horizon - the Moon.

It felt like a cosmic moment, the cycling of a glowing red orb that briefly dipped into the underworld to only rise again in triumph, and I was in awe. In that instant, I realised why the wide open spaces of Salisbury Plain, where Stonehenge is located, have been a place for observing the skies for millennia.

As modern humans living in urban environments awash with light, sometimes we forget how prominent the night sky would have been to people in the past. We know that the movements of the Sun, Moon and stars influenced our ancient ancestors, because around 5,000 years ago, at the end of the Neolithic (or New Stone) Age, the first farmers (who had arrived on British shores about a thousand years earlier) began to build extraordinary things.

Monumental tombs, stone circles and henges were all developed on a grand scale, and as people transformed their world, they looked to the skies. Many of these were aligned with the Sun on the solstices or equinoxes (when night and day are of equal length), including Stonehenge in England and Newgrange in Ireland. These monuments were built not only to help track the yearly movements of the Sun, but also to connect to its regenerative power.

Residence of the Sun