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Re: starship-design: Massively Distributed Computing for SETI



Ben Franchuk writes:
 > Here is the link that got me thinking about pre-history.
 > 
 > http://www.astrologyworldnews.com/go/offsite.asp?url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_871000/871930.stm
 > 
 > " prehistoric map of the night sky has been discovered on the walls of the
 >   famous painted caves at Lascaux in central France. 
 >     The map, which is thought to date back
 >    16,500 years, shows three bright stars
 >     known today as the Summer Triangle. 
 > "
 >     I want to know if such group of stars could be seen during the summer?

The "Summer Triangle" is the stars Vega, Deneb, and Altair, which are
easily visible in the summer months in the northern hemisphere.  They
would not have significantly changed their relative positions to each
other in the past few tens of thousands of years.

 >     Maybe it was a some other time of year that it could be seen.
 >     While one can't check if it was a star map, one can indeed check if the
 >     heavens did look that way.

>From what XEphem shows me, 16,500 years ago in France the stars Vega,
Deneb, and Altair would all have been circumpolar, meaning they would
have been visible at night any time of year.