Still Images
Maeshowe December 1997 - January 1998

The light is shown here shining down the passage on 2 December 1997, and illuminating the back wall.  Hitherto no photographic evidence had been produced for this effect so long before the solstice.  This was the first physical evidence for the prolonged illumination of the chamber.  In early November the sun first starts to get far enough south to start to shine into the passage, and by late in the month it finally is low enough and far enough south to shine onto the back wall itself

By mid-December the beam of light hitting the back wall has grown to beas tall as the blocking stone.  Starting as a narrow shaft, it gradually grows as the sun sets, until it is a wide patch reaching to the blocking stone.  We claim the record for first using a computer to send winter solstice pictures live from a chambered cairn!  Surprisingly it never gets really very cold in Maeshowe, which was just as well.

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