Some such new terms instituted by the International Astronomical Union would seem to generate more confusion than good. Constantly renaming things is not good science, especially when the history of astronomy is replete with the older terms, which are far better known to everyone. We say that as a dictionary author too. Increased creative but remote "jargonizing" of terminology acts as subject obfuscation, not as clarification.
At Stonehenge Decipherment Panorama 15 we wrote previously that these outer stones show that the ancients understood the ca. 26000-year cycle of Precession of the Equinoxes together with its "galactically" asymmetrical effect on the locations of the Autumn and Vernal Equinoxes in the stars (that is, the stars visible behind the Equinoxes at the time of their occurrence).
Below are our two seemingly complicated (but in fact easily understandable) graphics explaining the matter and commented in greater detail below, showing how the large rectangle at Stonehenge formed by the four station stones with its sides in a length ratio of 5 to 12 constitute a starry recordation of their understanding of the Precession of the Equinoxes.
Our images below show that the stars that the ancients used, when connected by lines, also show that same 5 to 12 ratio of the length of the shorter to the longer sides. The reader can measure them himself to check that out.
Please note, however, that only two station stones remain and whether the other two ever existed or whether the remaining mounds themselves instead of missing stones are the original markers is unclear.
The Stonehenge Station Stones show us the following galactic understanding as we have marked that same rectangle in the stars:
Stonehenge Station Stones : Precession of the Equinoxes 1
When the Summer Solstice is at Gemini and Sirius, the Winter Solstice is at ca. the top stars of the Teapot of Sagittarius, while the Autumn Equinox is at Crux, the Southern Cross, and the Vernal Equinox is at Diphda (Deneb Kaitos in Cetus). That variant position of the Solstices and Equinoxes in the stars is shown below by the lower half of the rectangle (for which reason we have cross-hatched out the top half):
Stonehenge Station Stones : Precession of the Equinoxes 2
On the other hand, when the Winter Solstice is at Gemini and Sirius, the Summer Solstice is, as expected, symmetrically at the top stars of the Teapot of Sagittarius, BUT, then the Autumn Equinox is at Fomalhaut and the Vernal Equinox is at ca. the stars alpha and beta Centauri, which both straddle the Galactic Equator, each on the other side of it, so one may have taken a middle route marked by two Aubrey Stones (and not the expected one) on top of Mound 92 at Stonehenge. That variant position of the stars is shown below by the upper half of the rectangle (for which reason we have cross-hatched out the bottom half):
TAKEN TOGETHER -- the ancients have combined BOTH variants into ONE rectangle -- those two variants explain the Stonehenge Station Stones, but it took this decipherer YEARS to figure that out, because the Stonehenge manner of recording that understanding with one rectangle it is not obvious. We first had to understand the galactic nature of Stonehenge to get it right.
As for the causes of precession, one can say that the wobble of the earth on its axis of rotation is a "cause", but of course, it is much more complicated than that, which we need not get into here. We refer generally to Milankovitch Cycles for discussion of the Earth's eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession.
Astronomers call axial tilt obliquity. As written at the Wikipedia link on Axial Tilt, "Earth's obliquity has varied between 22° 2′ 33″ and 24° 30′ 16″, with a mean period of 41,040 years."
How much the builders of Stonehenge specifically knew about "astronomy" in the formal sense of modern understanding is of course subject to discussion, but our decipherment images above suggest clearly that they understood precession of the Equinoxes to be a long-term astronomical, "galactic" cycle involving changes in the seasons respective to the stars, a development that they saw related to a ca. 24° variable of some kind.
In any case, in our decipherment view, the Station Stones at Stonehenge mark Precession of the Equinoxes, thousands of years before Hipparchus.
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