Chaco Culture National Historical Park, in northwestern New Mexico, is the grandest of the American Southwest’s pre-Columbian sites.
A major center of Ancestral Puebloan culture, Chaco flourished between about AD 900 and AD 1150.It comprises 15 major complexes, each with up to 4 stories and 700 rooms, many constructed from quarried sandstone masonry unique for its time.
Chaco is also a treasury of archeo-astronomy. A number of the complexes are oriented along celestial lines, and pictographs display a complex understanding of lunar cycles. Most famous of the pictographs is one showing a crescent moon and a bright star believed to depict the dazzling supernova of July 1054 that produced the Crab Nebula.
It was widely observed in East Asia and probably Arabia but apparently not in pre-Renaissance Europe. The moon was in proximity to the supernova during its brightest phase, when Chinese observers reported it visible in daylight for 23 days.
By 1130 AD, Chaco had begun to depopulate, at least in part due a drought that would last nearly 50 years.
I recovered this image from files from 4 June 2009; 5 x 2 minutes with a Canon 20D (unmodded), 17-40 mm lens at 20mm, at f/4.5, ISO 800, on an Astrotrac.
Wikipedia on Chaco:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaco_Culture_National_Historical_ParkNational Center for Atmospheric Research on the supernova pictograph:
https://www2.hao.ucar.edu/Education/SolarAstronomy/supernova-pictographStephenson & Green Paper on lack of European observation of SN 1054:
https://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2003JAHH....6...46S
Comments