[Kstars-devel] finding 'weird' celestial events

[Steve Lefevre]

I'm looking for an easy way to find 'remarkable' celestial events. I'm a 
religious studies major at the Ohio State University, and one of my 
professors' work is on religious architecture. Specifically he looks at 
architecture that commemorates and predicts celestial events.

I know 'remarkable' is ill-defined, but two general criteria that come 
to mind are 1. eclipses of any kind and 2. special proximities of the 
planets, moon, bright stars, etc. Basically anything that might cause 
people looking in the sky to go "Ooh!".

There is a Native American mound in Ohio that's shaped like an 
undulating serpent. It's called 'Serpent Mound', and there are a few 
theories about it, but none that really strike my fancy. The serpent has 
its tail coiled into an oval at the end. There are three undulating 
'waves' in its body. Finally, the head is rounded, and it appears to be 
swallowing another oval. There are two nodes at the base of the skull -- 
they could be eyes, or some suggest certain stars.

http://www.uwec.edu/greider/Indigenous/VersluisProject/Images/serpent.mound.p61.jpg

After driving through the sloping hills of southern Ohio to visit the 
mound, I came upon the idea that the mound might commemorate (or 
predict) an eclipse that took place near the horizon. The undulating 
waves in the snake's body would be nearby hills, and the head would be 
the eclipsed celestial body.  The coiled tail might represent the 
non-eclipsed sun or moon, perhaps below the horizon.

The mound is thought to have been build around 1070 CE. So, I'm trying 
to find all eclipses that would have taken place around that time, 
visible from southern Ohio, about lat -84 30 34.00 long 39 6 6.00, 
particularly *any that might have taken place near the horizon*.

Can I do this with KStars? Or is there another program out there?