The House of the Seven Dolls, also known as the Sun Temple, is extremely important to Mayan archaeoastronomers because of its function in charting the sun’s movement. Dzibilchaltun’s urban core is aligned along an east-west running sacbe, or ancient road, which effectively dedicates the city as a marker of the sun’s range and movement, back and forth each solar cycle.

The Sun Temple sits at the far east end of the site, and from this temple, a high priest would chart the sun’s passage, particularly when nearing the time of the equinox. The priest, during this time, would await the sunrise from inside the temple, where he alone was first privy to the birth of the fiery sun, while the masses waited in the plaza below for his announcement. They would not see the sun until it rose above the temple’s door jamb and actually shone through the temple.

We took hundreds of photographs of ancient sites in the Yucatan and Northern New Mexico as part of the project (including some very unique aerial photographs of the Yucatan). These images along with descriptions are available on the Traditions of the Sun website. 

The sun shines through a corner window and the image appears in the opposite corner of the room. Over the course of a few minutes the image will appear in center of the northwest corner. Due to cloudy weather the effect could only be seen for a few moments.

The solar marker is on the top level of the southeast side of Pueblo Bonito. Notice the rooms below. The ledge from where this image was taken was about 10 feet above the solar marker and 30 feet above the floor of the lower chambers.

High-resolution image are available on Flickr. There are more images of summer solstice and other events at Chaco Canyon in our blog. You can learn more about Chaco Canyon and archaeoastronomy at the park in the Traditions of the Sun website.

Update: One thing I forgot to mention…also shooting photos this morning was Justin Ladd. Check out his amazing time lapse movies of Chaco Canyon at: solsticedocumentary.com

The photograph below is my first attempt at astrophotography. Early Friday morning at 5AM, I’ll be trying again. I’m hoping to capture NASA’s LCROSS impact of the moon. This mission will measure the concentration of water ice in the permanently shadowed areas of the moon. Ideum developed an exhibit for NASA’s Lunar Robotics program, so we’ve been following this all along. (Update 9-5-09: NASA Just posted a viewing guide for the event.)

The photograph above was taken with a Canon 20D. Amateur astronomer Brad Hamlin set up the 18″ telescope. This image was shot with a 20mm eyepiece and 2x Barlow lens. And, yes, I did clean the image up a bit in Photoshop. Below are some other shots I took at Chaco Canyon earlier in day and the next morning.

The amazing architecture of the great house of Pueblo Bonito.

The beautiful sandstone veneer of Pueblo Bonito.

We saw elk on the way out of the park Sunday morning.  This view was from the dirt road (NM 57) in the southern part of Chaco Culture.

If you’re interested in seeing more photographs of Chaco Canyon. I’ve posted quite a few to the blog over the last few years. Check out the category “Chaco Culture National Historical Park.” You can see more photographs, including high-resolution versions of images that appear in this post, on Ideum’s Flickr photostream.

For our second multitouch table installation, we designed a mapping and photo mashup application. (Similar to the one we completed for our first table installation at the Don Harrington Discovery Center in Amarillo, Texas)  For Vulcan Park and Museum, we developed a multitouch panoramic viewing application that runs on two HP TouchSmart kiosks.

Like the touch table exhibit, these kiosks use NUI Snowflake software with custom Flash software which we developed.  The panoramic viewer allows for simple pinch gesture to zooming of a panoramic photograph that we took from a top the Vulcan Park statue.  Users can also flip (or flick) photographs in a photo viewer window that is connected to points of interest on the panoramic image. We designed and developed the stand and exhibit-case for the HP TouchSmart.  This platform provides a low-cost touch and  multiouch platform for computer exhibits.  There’s more about the panoramic viewer application in our portfolio.

Here are some photographs for the opening party for Birmingham Today.

Visitors interact with the interactive map and photographs of Birmingham.

You couldn’t tear some visitors away from the touch table.

The multitouch-enabled panoramic viewers were placed by the large windows in the gallery space allows visitors to explore the Birmingham Skyline.

The table runs a custom mulituser, multitouch application we developed with the Don Harrington Discovery Center and Vulcan Park and Museum. This multitouch mashup application uses Flickr and Yahoo! Maps. There is more on the design and software development process on the Ideum portfolio. The video below shows some of the features found in the application.

The press came out to see the exhibit. The local newspaper and all three network news channels showed up. Below DHDC’s Executive Director, Joe Hastings got interviewed by the local press.

Our next installation is in two weeks in Birmingham, Alabama. We’re going be installing another table along with two multitouch enabled HP TouchSmart kiosks. As far as we know, this will be the first time multitouch technology has been used exclusively throughout a permanent exhibit space.

The dancers perform in the plaza of the great house of Pueblo Bonito. For those of you who’ve never been to Chaco Canyon, Pueblo Bonito is largest of all the great houses found in the park, with nearly six hundred rooms, and it was three stories in some parts. Pueblo Bonito was built around 1000 AD and was continually built on for a few hundred years afterward, until the Chacoans left the area in 13th Century. Pueblo Bonito is a truly dramatic setting and it is a very emotional experience for those who dance; Chaco is the home of their ancestors after all.

This year the group of dancers were from Acoma Pueblo (which is the oldest, continually inhabited community in the U.S.). Below are some photos from their two morning dances. There are a few more photographs, including high-resolution versions on the Ideum Flickr site.

Dancing in the Plaza.

Marking the start of summer.

The two youngest dancers hold beautiful Acoma pottery.

ExhibitFiles won the Best of the Web award in the museum professionals category. Congratulations to our partners the Association of Science-Technology Centers and Indepedent Exhibits, and to our advisors and the many members of the ExhibitFiles.

The American Image: The Photographs of John Collier Jr. won the Best of the Web award in the exhibition category which included over 40 nominees. Congratulations to everyone at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology. The judges had great things to say about the project, you can view their comments on the conference forum.

You can learn more about the ExhibitFiles and The American Image in the Ideum portfolio.

Earlier in the month, I had the opportunity to meet the VRMag Editorial Director Marco Trezzini in Lugano, Switzerland. (I taught a class at the University of Lugano as part of their TEC-CH Masters program.) It was great to finally have an opportunity to meet Marco and talk shop, as we’ve been in email contact for several years now. VRMag has covered our work since we got started back in 2000, along with the work of hundreds of other photographers and multimedia firms. VRMag and the VRWay site list dozens of feature stories and an extensive hotlist of panoramic images from around the world.

Update November 30th: BoingBoing (the #3 Blog in the world according to Technorati) has a post about VRMag, apparently John Gaeta “the Oscar-winning special effects guru behind The Matrix trilogy and the forthcoming Speed Racer film” has some very nice things to say about VRMag.

Raydean Johnson (foreground) peforms the Turkey Dance. Also pictured: Belyle Johnson and Alexandra Nastacio.

Raydean Johnson and Xyla Johnson perform the Turkey Dance.

Dancers Xyla Johnson, Tanicia Nastacio, and Alexandra Nastacio perform the Pottery Dance.

Aldean Nastacio performs the Buffalo Dance.

Musicians Florentine Johnson (left) and Fernando Cellicion perform their original song, Redrocks.

Last year, we took pictures and met dancers from Hopi. Three years ago, we photographed the Tewa Dancers From the North for the Traditions of the Sun project with NPS and NASA. This year the Fernando Cellicion Traditional Zuni Dancers performed in the plaza of the great house of Pueblo Bonito. We saw three dances, the Turkey Dance, the Pottery Dance, and the Buffalo Dance–which the photographs below show.

We have many photographs of all three dances we’re still sorting through them. Myself or Emily will post more over the next few days.