FIRST STEPS TOWARDS OBTAINING CULTURAL ASTRONOMY SOFTWARE

A new software tool is introduced in this paper. It renders the local horizon for a terrestrial observer and the sky tracks of celestial objects that are of interest in cultural astronomy, with sufficient precision for historical times, by using open-source software tools and geographical data. Unlike popular planetarium software in which the researcher must know in advance the approximate date that an astronomically interesting event may have occurred, this tool allows the researcher to find the dates that events of cultural interest happened in the past and provides a basic visual representation of how they could have been observed from a location of interest. Celestial events such as the rising and setting of the Sun, Moon and planet Venus can be graphically compared to specific azimuthal orientations in order to determine possible astronomical intentionality. The software has been tested by the authors in their own research work, who were able to save resources such as travel time and expenses, since there was no need for further visits in astronomically interesting dates to the site.