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THERE WILL BE no members of the public admitted to Newgrange to view the Winter Solstice for a second year in a row as the chamber remains closed.
The Office of Public Works today announced the decision not to host the annual Winter Solstice lottery draw which is the usual process that chooses that successful participants who are allowed to be in the chamber during sunrise for each of the solstice mornings.
The solstice sunrise event will once again be livestreamed from within the chamber, the OPW confirmed.
“This will enable everyone to experience the wonderful phenomenon from the comfort of their homes in locations throughout the world,” it said.
The Winter Solstice is an astronomical phenomenon which marks the shortest day and the longest night of the year. In the Northern Hemisphere, the Winter Solstice happens on 21 or 22 December.
At sunrise on the shortest day of the year, for 17 minutes, direct sunlight can enter the Newgrange monument through the specially contrived small opening above the entrance known as the ‘roof box’ to illuminate the chamber.
The OPW added that the continued absence of visitors from the chamber at Newgrange presents it an additional opportunity to further its research project.
The project tracks, measures and monitors the movement of the winter sunlight coming through the roof box into the passage and chamber and determines how the beam of dawn light interplays with the chamber as we move towards solstice and then pass it.
Further details of the livestream event from within the chamber on the solstice mornings in December will be published in the coming weeks.
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That’s a shame. Always something I’ve wanted to do and I’ve put my name down on the lottery a good few years now and never made it, some day maybe, though the opportunities to win are getting less for me as the years go by. It’s great to be able to see it via streaming but it’s not the same I’d imagine, bit like watching a game on the TV, it’s good but not the same as being at the real thing. Ah well, I’ll try again for next year.
Ah here, enough already with the COVID
@Mick Hyland: a remanent of Holohan’s reign of terror.
And some want to give a Covid bonus to entire civil service. This lot obviously still not properly back to work.
@John McCann: nowt to do with OPW not being back to work more to do with people gathered in a small chamber 1 person could be covid asymptomatic and potentially infect everyone present same applies to those gathering outside all huddled together to hear anyone speaking etc and someone could be asymptomatic. Chances are it mightn’t happen but can’t risk it either.
Why can’t we risk it? Almost the entire population over 12 is fully vaccinated. What’s the risk of a few fully vaccinated people gathering in essentially an out door space? Night clubs will be open from the end of this month for goodness sake.
We have to treat covid like the flu from here on out. Normality must resume
Surely 1 person could do it. A golden ticket. Charlie and the Newgrange chamber..
I have my eye on a lone standing stone in West Cork. Just over 2m tall but very elongated in cross section, and the long axis points NE-SW, almost exactly into a notch between 2 hills on the SW horizon. Wouldn’t it be fabulous if the Winter Solstice sunset coincided with that notch? Between 18th and 22nd December if there is any clear sunset I’m off to my standing stone to watch the sun go down!
Getting ridiculous now, almost everyone is vaccinated so crack on. Covid is just an excuse now for laziness.
have your say