Speaker profile
Mr Simon Banton
B.Sc. A.R.C.S.
Available for booking
Amesbury, Wiltshire, England
Will travel anywhere in the UK
Archaeoastronomer
Amateur Astronomer
Science Communicator
Summary
I'm an archaeoastronomer and Stonehenge geek who's been researching the suggested alignments of this monument for over 30 years.
Full biography
Simon has been an amateur astronomer for 55 years and a Stonehenge geek for more than 30.
His undergraduate degree is in physics and astronomy and in 2010 he abandoned a long career in software development to focus on archaeoastronomy research.
He moved to a small village on Salisbury Plain, took a job as a visitor guide at nearby Stonehenge and spent 6 years (ab)using his staff privileges to carry out careful observations of the monument’s theorised alignments.
Simon has appeared on the BBC’s Sky at Night and Stargazing Live! programmes talking about the astronomy of Stonehenge and leads private tours of the site and its landscape.
In his spare time he enjoys arguing with people online who believe Stonehenge was built by aliens or by Victorians in the 1950s, and writes articles about his research interests on www.stonehengemonument.co.uk.
Talk Details
The typical talk I give to groups is called "The Astronomy of Stonehenge". It's about an hour long presentation with mostly image-based slides. I prefer to bring my own (Mac) laptop which has HDMI output for projectors. There's no audio support for the presentation required.
This talk investigates the astronomical alignments at Stonehenge - both those that are academically accepted and also some others not generally known about. Do they all exist? Are they accurate? Was there really an eclipse prediction mechanism?
The Altar Stone has recently been found to have been sourced from somewhere in NE Scotland and this has profound implications for our appreciation of Stonehenge. Could it have been the monument's founding stone? If so, where was it placed and how does one possible position impact our analysis and understanding?
