Thursday, January 4, 2024

A superfluous dot

Saraceni points to Paolo Molaro / Federico Bernardini, from Trieste last November. They're discussing an ancient stone on which the dots coincide with upper-Orion and bits of Scorpius. It would be a starmap except that one of these stars... isn't there today.

The story isn't going away. It keeps getting revived, first last December in Newsweek and yesterday again Saraceni.

Orion and Scorpius are star-generating regions of space, or were 10 million years ago. Those stars which shine so visibly today are young stars; Betelgeuse (in Orion) is on its way out. Maybe another one as bright as Rigel went nova, earlier?

Which brings us to: why the interest, in that particular part of the sky, at the northern tip of Adriatic. Usually the Old European Culture hits this up, on account constellations tend to look like animals, on account animal mating-seasons use the same calendar as farmers use. Animals don't do astronomy - but farmers do, farmers have to. Scorpio-Orion rising seems a late-autumn mark.

Where the starfield changes, some might worry the climate will change.

As to which century this starfield was seen - well, stone inscriptions are difficult to date. The fort was inhabited from the Middle Bronze down to the Gaulish invasions of ~400 BC. Probably always Raetic but I can't but feel that the Greeks might have paid the place a visit.

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