This month I have written a piece for the Astronomy Now magazine about some of the best places to go and see the winter solstice.  I included a range of ancient sites throughout the UK and Ireland, which could offer a different type of experience depending on what you were looking for; from the mass gatherings at Stonehenge to the more personal at Calliagh Berra’s House in Northern Island. I could have written about many more wonderful sites and choosing the six sites for the article was perhaps one of the hardest things I had to do. So its worth exploring what winter solstice connections there are in your area before getting ready to head out on the day 🙂

Tregeseal Winter Solstice 2017

From this stone circle, the winter solstice falls into the only visible location on the horizon where you can see the sea. Framed within the sea gap is the Isles of Scilly.

Image by Carolyn Kennett 2017

I had a wonderful chat with Julie Vural, who posted this piece about archaeoastronomy and culture on her blog The Dazzling Universe. It covers alignments in Cornwall and further afield as well as connections through the sky through objects such as the wonderful Alaca Höyük dagger. Which is one of the few examples of worked iron objects from prehistory with a meteorite origin. Anyway its well worth a read – the link is above.

The Alaca Höyük dagger, on display at the Museum of Anatolian Civilisations in Ankara