'It's powerful' - Very rare lunar event shines a fresh light on Stonehenge

It may seem fanciful, but as darkness approached and with it a vanishingly rare lunar event - it felt as if the beasts and the birds of Stonehenge had sensed something strange was afoot.

- Steven Morris

The song of the skylarks and the flight of the starlings seemed particularly energetic; hares, animals that have mythical associations with the moon, loped with apparent purpose around the stone circle; the humans who had gathered at the monument became skittish.

Stonehenge is, of course, closely linked with the rising and setting of the sun but there is a growing body of thought that the ancient people who built the circle were also fascinated by the moon and conscious of a phenomenon currently taking place called a "major lunar standstill", something which only happens every 18.6 years.

Archaeologists, astronomers and archaeoastronomers (who study how prehistoric people responded to the sky) arrived this weekend at the time of the full moon to explore the theory that the Stonehenge creators may have set up some stones to mark the lunar standstill, when moonrise and moonset are farthest apart along the horizon.

"It's very exciting," said Clive Ruggles, emeritus professor of archaeoastronomy at Leicester University. "This is a special night because the moon is passing at its lowest possible path through the sky and also it's full while it's doing it, so it's the two things together."