Summer Solstice – mini stone circle and Stonehenge

As we have a stony beach by our house we have easy access to many stones.  I decided to build a mini Stonehenge – well just a few pillars.  Luath enjoyed either knocking them down or raining tiny pebbles over.

I took some stones home so we could have our own Stonehenge at home for the solstice.  As I hadn’t spent time selecting stones with flat bottoms we needed to place them in our mini apple tree pot.

We also made a mini stone circle.
  
Hopefully I can find my compass before Friday so we can align a key stone with the sun rise.  You could also align a stone with direction of sunrise on special days - birthdays etc.

How to align your stones:
A sun calculator, and sollumis, are two sites that calculate sunrise/sunset times and directions. You just input location and date.   Where we live sunset on 20th June is 22:18 and it rises on the 21st at 4:39 at 42 ( sunset 319).
If you don’t have a compass then you can turn a needle into a compass using a magnet (I saw this at a talk, they attached needle to a pencil with a thread and suspended the needle in a clear cup with the pencil resting on cup brim) and  use this free to use compass print out to mark degrees where sunrise/sunset will be, use the needle to find north (or south if in Southern Hemisphere), line the print out north/south to the needle and  align your stone(s).

Information on rising and setting sun on summer/winter solstices and spring/autumn equinox, including building a sun track diorama.
Post script
We found a great stone on our woodland walk, one side flat and the other pointed.  Using a compass we lined the point with the sunrise position.  I did start to move our stone circle and Stonehenge to be around the new stone but we didn’t quite get it finished.
(Luath is 29 months)
Linked with Tuesday tots via Rainy Day Mum