Stellarium

Is Stellarium able to show the exact str constellations of the year 616 BC in South-West Germany?

Asked by Cornelia Thielmann

Hey people,
I am a student of archaeology in Tübingen (Germany) and really need your help. I need to do a presentation about a burrial mount in Villingen-Schwenningen, which is called Magdalenenberg. The problem is, a slightly crazy (or to be polite imaginative) guy had the idea the mount could be a calendar. He talks about rows of rods that should be orientated to the moon's ecliptic and so on. So far I can work everything out on my own, but there is one thing I need your help about. He ( by the way his name is Allard Mees) worked out a graphic which shows that the tombs in the burial mount should be identical to the stars and the star constellations of the time 616 BC. So I tried to rework what he did to get this map of his. I locked in the year the mount was erected, searched for the coordinates of the place and even looked at what height the summit of the mount is. BUT I don't get the constellation Mr Mees shows us. So I was wondering if Stellarium is even capable to show this timeframe correct? Does it calculate the relative position of the stars to each other?

I would like to show you the graphic I am referring to, but as I said it's not my own.

Edit: Forgot to mention Mr Mees used Stellarium, too.

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Bogdan Marinov (daggerstab) said : 		#1

Stellarium's orbital models, including the movement of the Earth, are not very precise outside of the 20th century. Nevertheless, it should be relatively accurate - Stellarium does model the precession of the Earth's axis, for example, and proper motion of the stars is not that great.

First, make sure you have the proper date/time. Stellarium uses astronomical year numbering:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_year_numbering
So 616 BCE should be -615 in Stellarium. It's also a good idea to use the Time Zone plug-in to switch to UTC time to avoid trouble with time zones and summer time rules.

You need to also make sure that you've entered the coordinates correctly (no flipped signs, etc.) As of the current version of Stellarium, elevation is taken into account only for calculating the color of the sky.

It should be noted that which constellations are visible in a certain place is dependent on the time of the year (i.e. the month/season).

As for the rest, I'm afraid I can't help you very much. I suggest asking on some specialized mailing list for archaeoastronomy, or waiting for Georg Zotti to answer - that's actually his field. (Mine is programming.)

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Best gzotti (georg-zotti) said : 		#2

Hello Cornelia!

As far as I have heard, Mr. Mees is not so sure on his "star map" any more, so I think a "big bashing" is not required (I unfortunately missed the discussion with Gesellschaft für Archäoastronomie in Sangerhausen last fall), although for a seminar talk (?) this may be a good topic. I have also seen his graphics with the Stellarium sky art, and some of the burials really don't fit. Unfortunately I have not read all of his paper, so I don't have all the details (esp., why exactly 616BC). However, I think I remember some of the "grave constellations" were re-arranged, no longer neighbors. I would be surprised if the builders had the same constellations as the Greeks of later antiquity, so that they rearranged the figures on this graveyard. So, I was not actively willing to remember much of it.

Stellarium is based on VSOP87, so the planetary positions should be accurate to arcminutes in about -4000..+8000 (or where do we have an abbreviated solution, Bogdan?) 616BC is well covered in that time frame.
There is still something wrong with the ecliptic obliquity in antiquity, however.
Elevation is also going into auto-computed air pressure for refraction. But that's of no issue here.
Stellar positions are good for several further millennia, if naked-eye accuracy is asked for. Except for Arcturus and Sirius, not much has changed noticeably in the relative positions of the brighter stars.

There is always a big word involved when archaeoastronomical issues are discussed in mass media: "calendar". Whatever poles there were, at best they could have been used to keep an observation-based calendar in sync with processes observable in the sky. A few poles are no calendar! (BTW, in that same way of thinking of some current newspaper authors, many medieval churches with patrocinium orientation would be "calendars"! No, they are first and foremost churches...)

What could still be interesting is those sticks/poles possibly connected with lunistices. I have seen how important and useful good (not necessarily pretty, but geometrically accurate!) 3D models in their landscape can be for such research. For Magdalenenberg I have no maps and no 3d model to show/verify in Stellarium/Scenery3d (experimental) or other 3D tools. Depending on your time frame and funding possibilities, I can give support/collaborate, but send me a private mail for more.

HTH, Georg.

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Cornelia Thielmann (cornelia-thielmann) said : 		#3

Thanks gzotti, that solved my question.