When one subsequently enters the Avebury Henge Circle from the Alexander Keiller buildings location, the first stone in the Northwest Sector of stones is Avebury Stone #30. Below we present our photographs and decipherment of the henge-outward face of Avebury Stone #30 and follow with postings that decipher the henge-inward face and the two narrower adjoining sides of the stone.
Avebury Stone #30 Photograph by Andis Kaulins
Below is the "Star Region" that Corresponds to the Henge Outward Face of Avebury Stone #30 Above, with nothing outlined
-- click on the Starry Night Pro 3.1 clip below to get a larger image --
The Shape of the "Open Space" Between Strands of the Milky Way in this Stellar Region Surely Inspired to Shape a Similar Figure in the Stars
This decipherment was more difficult than it appears because the similar open "shape" formed at this stellar region by the strands of the Milky Way (the purple-bluish colored area in the sky map) surely served the ancients as the idea for this figure in stone, but the stone was then actually carved based on a similar shape "drawn" in the surrounding stars. We discovered this by placing the above star map transparently on our above photo of Stone #30. The ancients clearly used a much larger area of stars to "draw" a similar figure.
Avebury Stone #30 Corresponding Stars and Shape using the Sky Map shows that Stone #30 marks stars from the bottom of Aquila to Serpens Cauda and Scutum and then the edge of Ophiuchus and the top of Sagittarius. The ancients, veritably, "mapped" the sky of stars in stone.
-- click on the graphic drawing below to get a larger image --
Avebury Stone #30 Henge-Outward Face and Corresponding Stars
-- click on the graphic drawing below to get a larger image --
The correspondence of the stars and the shape of the stone is so clear that we did not even find it necessary to trace Stone #30 to get the above result.
It was -- only initially -- somewhat of a surprise to us that not just the "hole" in the Milky Way was being marked -- because it does have a very similar shape -- but our previous decipherments show that the ancients in carving these stones represented much larger areas of stars -- stellar regions whose representation in stone continued to the left, right and above the henge-outward facing side, as we show in the subsequent postings for Avebury Stone #30. P.S. The through-going "lines" in decipherment above from the left bottom corner upward represent the Ecliptic, the Celestial Equator and the Galactic Equator.