First ‘major lunar shutdown’ in decades to align with June solstice

This year marks the first “major lunar shutdown” since 2006, when the Moon’s path moves higher in the sky, appearing to stop in view of people on the ground.

Also known as the “Lunistice,” this event occurs when the tilts of the Earth and Moon are at their maximum and overlap with the summer solstice on the night of Friday, June 21, in the Northern Hemisphere.

On this day, the moon will rise and set at its northeastern and northwestmost points, making it appear longer in the night sky.

Major lunar stops have been highly anticipated events throughout history, as structures like Stonehenge in England and the ceremonial earthworks of Chimney Rock and Hopewell in the United States align perfectly with the moon in the sky nocturnal.

Some sky watchers will observe the celestial event from Stonehenge and a few archaeologists plan to check whether or not the ancient site was built in alignment with this rare lunar event.

And similar shows related to America’s Native monuments will occur during these lunar months at Chimney Rock in Colorado, the Hopewell sites in Ohio, and Chaco Canyon in New Mexico.

Although local highlights for the major lunar stoppage vary depending on your location in the world and nighttime weather conditions, it has a chance of being visible two nights per month between now and November 2025.

The Moon can appear to rise and set at different points on the horizon due to the angles of its orbit and the tilt of the Earth’s axis.

While our entire solar system is essentially flat and the majority of planets, dwarf planets, and asteroids orbit in a flat plane or disk called the ecliptic, the Moon’s orbit has a slightly different angle.

While Earth rotates along an axis tilted 23.4 degrees to this plane of the ecliptic, our Moon’s orbit is only tilted 5.1 degrees to the ecliptic.

The result is that the Moon’s rising and setting points, and therefore the area of ​​Earth it passes through in between, can vary by 57 degrees depending on the year.

A major lunar stoppage marks the most extreme point of its range: the moon will rise at its highest point in the northeast and set at its highest point in the northwest – and it will also rise at its most southeastern point and will lie at its most southwestern point.

The Archaeoastronomy Database has created an interactive worksheet, video tutorial, and shorter fact sheet on which evenings in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres will experience the most extreme times of the major lunar shutdown, in depending on the perspective of their longitude and latitude.

But the key summer dates you’ll want to remember if you live in the United States or elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere are June 21 and 22, July 19, and August 15.

These are the main times when the major lunar shutdown will overlap with either a full moon or a phase of the moon large and bright enough to take advantage of, as opposed to an obscured full moon.

Those who live near Ohio may want to check out the Lunistice this Friday at Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, where it will line up with earthwork hills built thousands of years ago by Native Americans who lived in the Chillicothe area.

This “once-in-a-generation” event, park officials noted, will help the visiting public visualize how Hopewell residents “used their extensive knowledge of astronomy to align these geometric figures with the endless cycles of the Sun and Earth.” Moon on their return journey. and so on along the horizon.

According to the U.S. Forest Service which manages the lands surrounding Chimney Rock in Colorado, this weekend’s summer solstice lunistice will not be visible passing these long, tall national monuments.

“The Forest Service and its partners are discussing opportunities to share the event via other platforms such as live streaming, photography and/or video recording in 2024-2025,” federal officials said in a fact sheet of information.

“The Ancestral Puebloans of Chimney Rock,” the service noted, “would have seen the moonrises gradually change each year. In time, they would have noticed that at the northernmost point of its years-long journey, the full moon was rising between the rock pillars.

The service said that despite this historical value, the area would be closed on those evenings for safety reasons, including “potential encounters with wildlife such as bears, mountain lions, rattlesnakes.”

But similar restrictions will not apply to those near Stonehenge in the UK.

Thousands of tourists will flock to Stonehenge in the English countryside this weekend for the overlap of the summer solstice and lunistice, including some scientists.

A project to study the link between Stonehenge and the major lunar shutdown is being led by experts from the universities of Oxford, Leicester and Bournemouth.

Dr Fabio Silva, senior lecturer in archaeological modeling at Bournemouth University, said that during the major lunar shutdown the moon will be aligned with the ancient ‘station stones’ of Stonehenge.

Although only two remain standing, the Station Stones marked the corners of a perfect rectangle with its center point at the exact center of the monument.

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One side of this rectangle appears to point southeast, corresponding to where the moon will rise during the major lunar shutdown.

‘We want to assess whether this is probably due to chance or whether it was intentional,’ Dr Silva told MailOnline last April.

“So we want to assess where one should stand, how many people might actually witness the alignment, whether after rising/before setting the moon will be obscured by other stones that might diminish the experience, if the moonlight casts shadows inside the circle,” Dr. Silva explained.

“These are the elements that, taken together, can help us build an argument for or against these alignments,” said the archaeologist.

Stonehenge was deliberately built to align with the sun at the solstices, according to English Heritage, which manages the site.

He explains: “At Stonehenge, on the summer solstice, the sun rises behind the Heel Stone in the northeastern part of the horizon and its first rays shine into the heart of Stonehenge.

“Observers of Stonehenge at the winter solstice, standing at the entrance to the enclosure and facing the center of the stones, can watch the sun set in the southwest part of the horizon.”

Identifying whether or not the site was built, in part, to mark the Lunistice, could help advance a theory about why the megalith was built: as a gigantic stone calendar.

Professor Timothy Darvill, an archaeologist at Bournemouth University, believes Stonehenge served as an ancient solar calendar, helping people keep track of the days of the year.

The British researcher behind the theory believes that Stonehenge’s large sandstone slabs, called sarsens, each represented a single day in a month, making the entire site a huge timekeeping device.

But the theory is still hotly debated, with some archaeologists and other academics describing it as “completely unfounded” and based on “forced interpretations, numerology and unsupported analogies.”