A Different View of the Sky

We started out the day by visiting Coricancha, the temple of the sun. The Inca people came here to worship the sun. The temple was not only devoted to the sun, other important deities such as the moon were centered there as well. This temple is notable for its gold, as well. There are many shrines and one of the most interesting displays is a plaque said to be made out of gold that has representations of the sun, mother earth, the Incas, mountains, etc; all things that were very important and the basis of the Inca people. The solar system plays a major role in the Coricancha, for example, at the center of the temple there are invisible lines called ceques that "form four parts corresponding to the four royal roads which went out from Cuzco" (154). There were shrines that were on each of the ceques, representing holy or sacred places.
Later at night, after visiting the temple, we went to a really cool planetarium where we were able to see all of the constellations and ways that the Inca tracked the stars and the solar system. The planetarium was really one of the most informative and interesting sites on the trip. We went into a dome shaped room where there was incense burning and the stars were projected on the ceiling. Mapped out were constellations such as the Southern Cross which was used as the Inca method of navigation. One of the ways the Incas tracked the solar system was through a man made mirror. It is a pool of water surrounded by stones and the water reflects the sky. This strategy works really well because as opposed to spending hours straining your neck to look up you can just look down into the pool and also instead of just staring into the sun, which is painful, to track its movement, you can look into the pool.