The Sun, Moon and Venus at Uxmal

1980 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weldon Lamb
Keyword(s):  
The Sun ◽  

Counts of mosaic facade elements, doors, steps, and colonnettes of the East, West, and North Buildings of the Nunnery Quadrangle at the Maya site of Uxmal suggest that these features, taken together, preserve knowledge of eight facts about the sun, moon, and Venus: the moon's synodic period is 29.53 + days; the lunar sidereal period lasts nearly 27.33 days; the Venus synodic mean is almost 584 days; the observed Venus synodic can vary between 581 and 587 days; any five consecutive Venus synodics equal or come to within one day of eight vague years of 365 days each; one sun-moon correlation has five short years and three long ones together equal to eight vague years or eight true solar years or 99 lunations; the Venus sidereal period is nearly 224 days long; and, finally, 13 Venus sidereals virtually equal five Venus synodics. Cheek glyphs, flanking birdserpents, and plumed-snake headbands all suggest that most of the masks on the East Building, West Building, and Governor's Palace represent not Chac but Kukulcan-Venus. It is therefore suggested that at least some Pure Florescent facades contain astronomical, calendrical, and ritual information, not just attractively arranged mosaic stones, and that other features, such as doors, steps, and colonnettes, should also be considered as potentially informative.

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-70
Author(s):  
Jockie Zudhy Fibrianto ◽  
Mochamad Hilmy

The road corridor in Pontianak City has different shading output depending on the sun orientation. The difference has caused a temperature difference that affects the pedestrian thermal comfort along the corridor. Identification and measurement of shading temperatures that occur due to buildings and trees were carried out for three days in each afternoon with relatively similar weather conditions. The road corridor that becomes the research location was at A. Yani St.-Gajah Mada St.-Tanjung Pura St., which has a North-South orientation and Teuku Umar St.-Diponegoro St.-Sisingamangaraja St., who has an East-West direction. The analysis phase is done by comparing the effectiveness of imagery produced by buildings and trees. After that, the identification and measurement results are compared with Indonesian thermal comfort standards SNI T-14-1993-03 to obtain suitable thermal comfort in the road corridors in Pontianak City.


1961 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 540 ◽  
Author(s):  
RF Mullaly

The brightness distribution of 21-cm radiation over the Sun's surface has been studied for the past four years with the Christiansen crossed-grating interferometer (Christiansen et al. 1961) at Fleurs near Sydney. The observations described here were made using one arm of this cross as a simple grating interferometer, providing a transit instrument with a fan beam of about 2' of arc resolution to half-power points in the east-west direction and very low resolution north-south. The Sun was scanned repeatedly from east to west at time intervals of approximately 4 min.


1967 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-46
Author(s):  
D. G. Cole ◽  
R. F. Mullaly ◽  
A. Watkinson

During the period 1966 July 12 to August 5 observations were made of the Sun at three radio observatories. The instruments used were the east-west arm of the Mills cross at Molonglo (408 MHz) and the Christiansen cross at Fleurs (696 MHz and 1424 MHz). The aim of these observations was to study the discrete sources of the slowly varying component of solar radio emission, while activity was comparatively quiet. The three frequencies enabled the variation of source structure with height of solar atmosphere to be studied. It has been pointed out by Swarup et al., and Christiansen et al. that the determination of the frequency dependence of these discrete sources is important for defining the physical mechanisms causing the radio emission.


Author(s):  
Duane W. Hamacher ◽  
Kirsten Banks

Studies in Australian Indigenous astronomical knowledge reveal few accounts of the visible planets in the sky. However, what information we do have tells us that Aboriginal people are close observers of planets and their motions and properties. Indigenous Australians discerned between planets and stars by their placement in the sky and their general lack of scintillation. Traditions generally describe the ecliptic and zodiac as a pathway of sky ancestors represented by the sun, moon, and planets. This included observing the occasional backwards motion of sky ancestors as they communicate with each other during their journey across the sky, representing an explanation of retrograde motion. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people note the relative brightness of the planets over time and information about the roles they play in their traditions around Australia. Knowledge systems outline the importance placed on Venus as the morning and evening star, making connections to the object as it transitions form one to the other through observations and calculation of the planet’s synodic period. Traditions note the relative positions of the planets to the moon, sun, and background stars, as well as inter planetary dust through zodiacal light, which is perceived as a celestial rope connecting Venus to the sun. The relative dearth of descriptions of planets in Aboriginal traditions may be due to the gross incompleteness of recorded astronomical traditions and of ethnographic bias and misidentification in the anthropological record. Ethnographic fieldwork with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities is revealing new, previously unrecorded knowledge about the planets and their related phenomena.


1967 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. T. Stewart

The function of the 158 MHz interferometer operating at the CSIRO Solar Observatory, Culgoora, N.S.W., is the measurement of solar radio burst positions at a frequency close to the second harmonic frequency of the radioheliograph. The interferometer is designed to measure the north-south and east-west position co-ordinates of an isolated active region on the Sun with an accuracy of ~1′ arc, at rates up to 16 s−1.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (S367) ◽  
pp. 260-264
Author(s):  
Siramas Komonjinda ◽  
Orapin Riyaprao ◽  
Korakamon Sriboonrueang ◽  
Cherdsak Saelee

AbstractPrasat Hin Phanom Rung, located in Buriram Province of Thailand, is an ancient temple that had been built between the 10th and 13th century. The temple, which is off east-west orientation by 5.5° towards north, has unveiled the astonishing phenomena exhibiting both astronomical and architectural intellect of the ancient builders. The phenomena involve perfect quarterly-alignments of the sun through all the fifteen doorways of the temple. The phenomenal orientation of this ancient architecture has been elucidated by several scholars—including historians, archaeologists, and astronomers—that it might be related to solar or lunar events only. However, our studies have otherwise found a clue to this mystery that it may be based on how the ancient intelligence used stars in the zodiacal constellations to regulate agricultural calendars. In this study, we find that Phanom Rung was oriented with respect to Spica such that on the day Spica set on the west-side doorway at dawn, the sun was entering Mesha Rashi (Aries). This day has a direct connection to a New Year’s Day of Saka calendar (Śaka Era), presently called Thaloeng Sok Day. Furthermore, we have found the relationship between Spica and the full moon of Caitra from which the intercalary month-year (Adhikamas) was detected.


2005 ◽  
Vol 127 (1) ◽  
pp. 156-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Shanmugam ◽  
W. Christraj

Paraboloidal dish concentrators need tracking the sun in the east-west and north-south direction continuously throughout the year. But this paper explains the method of intermittent tracking of the sun in the north-south direction with no tracking in the east-west direction for less energy yield. The frequency of tracking in the north-south direction is determined by the relationship between the variation in solar altitude angle and the size of the absorber in the Paraboloidal dish concentrator. A computer program in Visual BASIC is written to enable the detailed calculations of data for the analysis.© 2004 American Institute of Physics.


2005 ◽  
Vol 23 (9) ◽  
pp. 3139-3147 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Skirgiello

Abstract. Various manifestations of solar activity are not uniformly distributed with heliographic longitude. By using east-west asymmetry in the occurrence rate of CMEs (coronal mass ejections), the longitudinal dependence in SOHO LASCO 1996-2004 data has been studied in this work. The solar rotation periodicity has been found, indicating the presence of active longitudes, whose phase is reversed twice during the studied period. It is more prominent in the Southern Hemisphere. The east-west asymmetry is also present when calculated for longer time periods. Sometimes (particularly during low solar activity), there is an alternation of the eastern and western domination every six months. Taking into account the orbital revolution of the Earth about the Sun, this indicates the existence of enhanced activity, fixed in space (not undergoing Carrington rotation). Moreover, there is about a 3.7% overall excess of western events, lasting for the entire reported time, suggesting some bias in the observations. A hypothesis to explain this phenomenon is proposed.


2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (14) ◽  
pp. 614-614
Author(s):  
Silvia C. Dalla ◽  
Lyndsay Fletcher ◽  
Nicholas A. Walton

AbstractWe use the workflow capabilities of the AstroGrid Virtual Observatory system (<http://www.astrogrid.org>) to analyse the relation between flare productivity and location of Active Region (AR) emergence on the Sun. Specifically, we investigate whether emergence of a new region near existing ones results in increased productivity of the new and/or pre-existing AR. To address this question, we build a series of workflows that perform queries to catalogues of regions and flares, and operations on the results of the queries. There is a strong East-West asymmetry in the location of emergence of new regions. We do not find a significant difference between the flaring rate of paired and isolated regions, when we choose a value of 12° as the cutoff between the two populations.


1992 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. S. Ivanov-Kholodny ◽  
N. B. Mulukova ◽  
V. E. Chertoprud
Keyword(s):  
The Sun ◽  

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