By DAVE EISENSTADTER
Staff Writer
AMHERST — Observers of the winter solstice will gather around a sun wheel built by a University of Massachusetts-Amherst astronomer to mark the shortest day of the year.
Sunday’s celebrations were organized around the UMass sun wheel, a Stonehenge-like outdoor circle whose standing stones line up with the locations on the horizon of the rising and setting sun at the times of the solstices and equinoxes.
Yesterday’s winter solstice marks the date when nights are longest and days are shortest in the Northern Hemisphere and the sun rises and sets at its most southerly location along the horizon.
It was the first winter solstice in more than 15 years without Judith Young, an astronomy professor, there to greet it.
Young, who died May 23 at the age of 61 after a long battle with multiple myeloma, built the University of Massachusetts Sunwheel in 1997. Since then, she has led summer and winter solstice sunrise and sunset gatherings each year at the site, which is next to McGuirk Alumni Stadium.
Though she was diagnosed with cancer in 2006, the Sunwheel remained an important part of her life, said her daughter, Elyria Laura Little.
“I don’t think there was a time up until this past spring when she didn’t plan to go out to the Sunwheel,” Little said.
In her place, UMass astronomer Stephen Schneider conducted the gathering, which took place at 7 a.m. for the sunrise and 3:30 p.m. for sunset.
Little was in elementary school when she first helped her mother construct the Sunwheel, which consists of a circle of stones measuring 8 to 10 feet high. They are placed to indicate where the sun will rise and set on the summer and winter solstices, as well as mark the northern and southern extremes of the moon’s orbit around the Earth.
To start with, Little and her mother gathered small stones to place in the same locations the larger stones now stand. One would stand in the center of the wheel while the other would stand so her shadow would reach the center right at sunrise and sunset on the solstices.
That first year, the rocks were mowed up with the grass, and the next year the same thing happened. Eventually Young sought approval from the university’s maintenance department so the wooden stakes they placed that year would remain.
The larger stones came later, with a grant from the National Science Foundation. The stones that now stand there are set in concrete, according to Schneider.
Young came up with the idea for the UMass Sunwheel in 1992 while she was at the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana and saw a medicine wheel, her daughter said.
“She thought that it was a really good teaching tool,” Little said. “This was huge for her, making the visual connection between sky and earth.”
Young loved to teach, according to Little. She never sat in on her mother’s lectures at the university, where Young was made an associate professor in 1989 and promoted to full professor in 1993, but she remembers guest lessons her mother taught to physics classes at her own schools.
Before the Pixar movie “Wall-E” came out, Young anticipated one of the devices used in the film in her presentations on how to move in the vacuum of space, Little said. Young would sit on a wagon and use a fire extinguisher to propel herself out the door.
Family was also important to Young. During her first bout with the disease that would claim her life, Young’s goal was to be well enough to dance at Little’s wedding in 2007.
“She did,” Little said.
The Sunwheel was another opportunity for Young to teach, Little said. Little enjoyed watching her mother discuss astronomy on the solstice gatherings.
It became a special place for many — people have been married at the Sunwheel, Little said. It was also a place where a memorial was held for Young.
Early in June, close to the summer solstice, about 150 people gathered in tribute to Young at the sunset.
“I think she would have really liked it,” Little said. “We all wore bright colors.”
By the anniversary of her mother’s death, Little hopes to be able to place a plaque at the Sunwheel. She said she is in talks with university staff to make that happen. At Sunday’s event, the university was asking for a $3 donation to support placing the plaque, as well as maintenance of the site.
In the meantime, Schneider will be picking up where Young left off with the gatherings. He had been giving the talks as Young’s health failed, although she still attended.
At one point, Young was worried that no one would continue the tradition, and was relieved someone would be taking it over.
At yesterday’s event, Schneider discussed how the Earth’s orbit changes the locations of the sunset and sunrise, and he often brings along a hula hoop as a visual aid.
“It was Judy’s idea that people had lost touch with how things move in the sky. I think she was absolutely right,” Schneider said. “A lot of these things seem mysterious, but thousands of years ago people built these things to show how things move in the sky.”
Little said her mom would want her to invite people to the Sunwheel, not only to observe the solstice, but as a way to appreciate the wonder of the cosmos.
“Take the time to remember we are part of an amazing thing — this universe,” Little said. “There are hundreds of pathways to discovering how awesome a place this is, and this is one of them.”
Dave Eisenstadter can be reached at [email protected].
