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[[Four images: sun tunnels]] Sun tunnels (detail Draco). July 14, 1976, at different times of day; upper left: 6:30 A.M; upper right: 10:30 A.M.; lower left 7:30 P.M.; lower right: 9:30 P.M. tunnels. Because of the 7 1/4-inch thickness of the holes, the shape of the light that reaches the bottom of the tunnels is usually a pointed ellipse, but there are times when the sun is directly over a hole and a perfect circle is cast. Day is turned into night, and an inversion of the sky takes place: stars are cast down to Earth, spots of warmth in cool tunnels. Moonlike crescents of light form inside the rims of the tunnels. They elongate in the early and late hours of the day, and disappear altogether when the tunnels are in full shadow inside, which occurs at a different time on one diagonal of the "X" than it does on the other. (Around the summer solstice this happens about 12:30 and 3:30.) On days when the clouds come and go, there is a dimming, a darkening, and then a brightening of the areas of light. When the sun beats down on the site, the heat waves seem to make the earth dissolve, and the tunnels appear to lose their substance - they float like the mirages in the distance. Around the time of the solstices, when the sun rises and sets through the tunnels, it glows bright orange on the tunnel walls. When the white-hot sun was sinking To the blue edge of the mountain, The watchers saw the whiteness turn To red along the rim. Saw the redness deepen, Like a huge bowl filled with fire Red and glowing, seemed to rest upon the world. Navajo Indian Poem trans, Eugenia Faunce Wetherill The sun is nothing out of the ordinary in the universal scheme of things: merely one star among thousands of millions, and not even a particularly large or bright one. J.B. Sidgwick Introducing Astronomy At night, even a quarter moon can cast a pattern of light. The moonlight shines through the holes in different positions and with a different intensity than the sunlight does. In the moonlight the tunnels seem to glow from within their own substance, the rime of the tunnels forming crescent in the night. As you move through the tunnels, the moon and stars and planets can be lined up and framed through each hole, Looking up through the holes on a bright night is like seeing the circles of light during the day, only inverted. The Moon was formed billions of years ago. But no one is sure just how. Space was full of dust and rocks in the days, and these came together to form the Earth. Perhaps when the Earth was first formed, part of it broke loose and became the Moon. Isaac Asimov The Moon Thus he conceived his voyaging to be An up and down between two elements, A fluctuating between sun and moon. A sally into gold and crimson forms. Wallace Stevens "The Comedian as the Letter C" In choosing the constellations for the holes, I wanted only those with stars of several different magnitudes, so that I could have holes of different diameters. Depending on which of the 12 astronomical charts I consulted, the number and positions of the [[right margin: 36]]
