Experts say Friday's solar eclipse mirrors astronomical events during final year of Richard III
This article originally appeared on Culture24.
As Richard III's reinterment approaches, experts are drawing parallels between this Friday's eclipse and a portentous eclipse during the king's final year
The solar eclipse of November 13 2012© NASAHistorical astronomical data of the time of Richard III and the Battle of Bosworth, examined by the University of Leicester, shows how, on the day of his wife’s death on March 16 1485, the medieval monarch would have looked up and seen the sky darken as the moon passed between the Earth and the sun.
A second cosmological occurrence is said to have taken place following the warrior king’s death at Bosworth on August 22 1485. As Richard’s defeated body lay beneath the arches of the Church of the Annunciation in Leicester, it is believed that a blood-red moon shone down on his battle-scarred corpse.
Colin Brooks, the university's chief photographer and a member of the Leicester Astronomical Society who studied historical astronomical data from 1485, describes how Richard’s body was taken to Leicester and displayed for three days. "At night the near full moon would be shining down on his naked and broken body," he says.
“During the eclipse, depending on the amount of volcanic dust in the atmosphere, the appearance of the moon could vary in colour between orange and a deep blood-red.
"Geological evidence suggests that significant eruptions did occur in the mid-15th century.”
Brooks used planetarium software to trace the position of stars and planets during important moments in the life, and death, of Richard III.
“Extra research was required for the accurate position of the Moon which I sourced through NASA archives covering the period 1485,” he says.
King Richard III and Queen Anne in Cardiff Castle© VeteranMP - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons“It's known accurately as we know the orbit of the Earth and Moon accurately - so you apply the laws of physics and work backwards,” explains Professor of Astrophysics and Space Science Paul O'Brien.
“The uncertainty for the 1485 eclipse is much less than a day so for that one we can be sure it happened on March 16.”
With the reinterment of the last Plantagenet King only days away (March 26), there is a temptation to see the eclipse this Friday as a mirror of events during the king’s final year; several accounts of Richard’s fall at the Battle of Bosworth mentioned the eclipse as an omen.
However, a historian and former lecturer at the university, David Baldwin, said they were more than likely penned in hindsight.
“The Croyland Chronicler says only that there was a great eclipse of the sun on the day Queen Anne Neville died - he does not suggest that it boded ill for her husband. Polydore Vergil doesn't mention it at all,” he says.
“I suspect that it's a case of someone being wise after the event when Richard had actually been killed.”
Baldwin is probably a good man to listen to; in 1986 he famously made the first serious suggestion that King Richard III’s remains could lie undisturbed beneath the Grey Friars car park in Leicester, where they were eventually discovered by University archaeologists in 2012.
What do you think? Leave a comment below.
More from Culture24's coverage of Richard III:
Head of Richard III reconstructed in four-hour operation based on DNA test results
Archaeologists open coffin of elderly woman found near Richard III's grave in Leicester friary
"Like opening a tin can": The story behind the lead coffin found in Richard III's friary
Newly released film footage shows "eureka moment" when killer blow to King Richard III was found
Royal bloodline questioned as scientists conclude 529-year "missing person" search for Richard III
Gray Friars skeleton is last Plantagenet king, say Leicester team on trail of Richard III
