What do you call a Kerry astronomer ? An optimist. The sundial at Kilmalkedar, along the ‘way of the saints’, on the Dingle peninsula in Co. Kerry. On a very wet day.
I should probably start with an apology. To any tourist who spent their hard-earned cash on a holiday to Ireland any time in the last 3 weeks – sorry. The rain has been relentless , and despite the fact that the rain has been falling almost constantly for, oh, the last four thousand years, there still isn’t much to do in Ireland when the sun isn’t shining. Again, sorry about that – we’ll get someone in to have a look at it.
Exactly 2552 years before I was born – May 28 585 BC – a battle between two kings along the river Halys (in what is now Turkey) was halted when the sky went dark. A solar eclipse had occurred – one which had been already predicted by Thales, one of the Seven Sages of ancient Greece.
I have always presumed that the weather was better in ancient Ireland – otherwise, those stone circles and aligned standing stones would not mean quite so much without a sun to point to, or to cast a shadow. Thales would have had a hard time predicting dinner time – never mind a future eclipse – if he’d been faced with this summer’s weather. And I wonder if the weather in Ireland had been better over the last few hundred years, would we have produced most astromoners. Lets face it, if Galileo had lived in Galway, he wouldn’t have needed a telescope to look at stars – he’s have needed a crystal ball.
On Thursday Friday, the Earth will reach aphelion - the furthest point from the sun. Not that we’ll see much of it in any case.
Hi John, your shots, observations and knowledge are always inspiring.
Five years ago, I was playing tourist in Dingle and visited this site. It was sunny but the stick was not in the hole on top of the sundial. We were all ruminating about the purpose of this object. I thought that it was a fertility symbol. (I know, dirty mind!) Someone found a stick lying nearby and placed it in the hole and declared it a sundial. I thought that it was unlikely because of the weather, but someone pointed out to us the sundial theory in a guidebook.
The sundial is in the yard of a very nice church ruin.
Brought back nice memories. Thanks.