New app offers virtual solstice tour

Reuters/London

A reveller blows his horn as the sun rises at Stonehenge on Salisbury plain in southern England yesterday. The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, and the longest night of the year

For those who couldn’t quite make it to Stonehenge to watch the sun rise during yesterday’s winter solstice, a new app could offer some consolation by offering a virtual tour around the mysterious stones.  Features include a Google Maps image of the circle of stones giving different views, allowing users to stand within the virtual stones and physically move about the Unesco World Heritage Site. “It makes for an absorbing immersive experience and allows people to see and hear Stonehenge as it was 5,000 years ago,” said Rupert Till, from the University of Huddersfield, who worked on the design. The app also offers a history of the prehistoric monument in the southwestern English county of Wiltshire. Some 1,000 people gathered at the site yesterday morning as the sun rose at around 0800 GMT on the shortest day of the year.  The shortest day of the year often falls on Dec 21 but this year and last year druids and pagans marked the first day of winter on Dec 22.