Free Astronomy Magazine July-August 2016

ARCHAEOASTRONOMY W illiam meets Daniel De Lisle, Canadian Space Agency project officer. The outcome of this meeting will result rather con- troversial. [Cana- dian SpaceAgency] W illiam proudly show- ing a framed print that reads “my new archaeo- astronomy discovery”. Un- fortunately for him, the truth turned out to be quite different. [Hydro-Québec] between the brightest stars and the largest Maya cities. Encouraged by the results, he continued his research and on a not clearly identifiable source he found references to a possible 23 rd constellation known by the Mayans, made up of only three stars, that the Québec teen projected onto the settle- ments still waiting for a “heavenly match”. Two stars appeared to coincide with as many cities, while the third was not pro- jecting onto any known archaeological site. At that point William had a remarkable intui- tion: perhaps the third city exists, but it has not been yet discovered be- cause hidden deep in the thick jungles of that re- gion; if that’s so, the third star will tell us exactly where to look for it. It was with this seemingly sound reasoning that William asked for the help of the Ca- nadian Space Agency, which let him put his hands on some satellite images of the area where that missing city should have been. Not yet satisfied with these images pro- duced by NASA and JAXA, the teen visited also dozens of websites where similar ma- terial could be consulted, including images taken in 2005 showing the supposed area after a fire had thinned down its dense veg-