Celestial Events
Roden Crater belongs to a tradition of monumental structures that have been built by artists, rulers and priests, ancient and modern. Above-ground observatories for specific celestial events include Maeshowe in Scotland (which predates the pyramids), Newgrange in Ireland, and Abu Simbel in Egypt. Remnants of ancient sites that resemble ‘handmade volconoes,’ large mounds with a depression at the summit, are also scattered around the world. These include Herodium near Jerusalem and Old Sarum in England. In the sixteenth century, the great astronomer Tycho Brahe pioneered ‘naked eye observatories,’ of which the eighteenth-century Jantar Mantar in Jaipur is perhaps the best example. Turrell studied and adapted essential features of the naked-eye observatory in his designs for Roden Crater, where the natural formation recalled these man-made precedents.
Throughout the planning and construction of Roden Crater, Turrell consulted with noted astronomers including E.C. Krupp, Director of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, and the late Richard Walker, an astronomer with the U.S. Naval Observatory in Flagstaff, in order to calculate the excavation and alignment of the Crater’s tunnels and apertures. When completed the structures within the Crater will form a vast naked eye observatory for celestial objects and events ranging from obscure and infrequent to the more familiar summer and winter solstice.
The East Portal, the Alpha (East) Tunnel and the Sun | Moon Chamber act in concert as a monumental Camera Obscura, or pinhole camera. Transmitting light from the East Portal aperture, the Alpha (East) Tunnel focuses images on the west side of the monumental image stone in the Sun | Moon Chamber annually for the southernmost sunset and every 18.61 years to mark the Major Lunar Standstill.
Annually, ten days before and ten days after the Winter Solstice (Dec 11th and Dec 31st with additional imaging on three days before and after those dates), the annual southernmost sunset, offset by the dates above, is imaged on the west side of the image stone. The image is enlarged and brightened by a custom ground glass lens set at the mid-point of the tunnel.