A new website has been created by English Heritage to enable people around the world to experience the skies above the iconic stone circle, to learn about movements of the sun, moon and planets and to see the solar alignment at Stonehenge.
The visuals are a representation of the view from within Stonehenge, a composite from various sources, not the literal view. Visit the skyscape website here
Day view
The view of the daytime sky is accurate to within a window of approximately five minutes, with the position of the sun accurate to a similar margin. You can use the highlighted squares at the top to view the last sunrise and sunset. Weather conditions are accurate – you may sometimes see raindrops on the camera!
Night view
After dark we switch from a photographic depiction to a computer generated one, which accurately displays the live location of the stars and the five visible planets. Neptune, Uranus and Pluto (as a dwarf planet) are consciously not included, as, being invisible to the naked eye, they remained undiscovered until the 18th century or later, and were consequently unknown to the builders of Stonehenge. As the night sky is a computer model it does not reflect weather conditions at the site.
Enjoy the experience!
Aside from the technical and informational aspects of Skyscape it’s also our hope that you’ll enjoy it from a more human perspective. We’ve created a webpage which offers a small escape, a pleasant place to visit, to which you can return frequently, even within a single day, and connect with the land, the stones and the skies above.
To capture the sky, a custom Raspberry Pi based, solar powered camera equipped with a 220° Fish Eye lens was built. You can see the status of the camera at freeboard.io .
How to use the site
Skyscape makes use of many modern web standards, so performs best with a modern browser and operating system. Older software, such as Internet Explorer, cannot always provide a good experience. Latest versions of browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, Edge and Safari will perform best.
Visit the Skyscape website here
If you are experiencing issues, try updating your system and graphics drivers to the latest version.
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