On the eve of a partial solar eclipse on August 11, 2018, which would be seen across most of the Northern Hemisphere on Earth, some unknown crop artists drew the beautiful picture of a “planetary gearbox”, which seems to contain three “planetary” or “epicyclic” gears.  

This was clearly an artistic metaphor for certain “gear-like” motions of our Sun and Moon in Earth’s sky, which give rise to solar or lunar eclipses on a fairly regular basis, several times each year. Yet what else might they have subtly been trying to tell us?  

One day before a partial solar eclipse which would be seen across most of the Northern Hemisphere on Earth (see eclipse-2018-august-partial-solar-eclipse-watch-online-again), some unknown crop artists drew on August 10, 2018 a beautiful field image on top of Etchilhampton Hill, near the small village of Mixon. This field image is shown in the slide below:  

Right away we can see that their crop picture seems to represent what is known as a “planetary gearbox” (see Epicyclic_gearing). Within such a device, several different mechanical gears turn around one another, in the same way that astronomers on Earth once used “epicycles” to explain how the Sun, Moon or other bright heavenly objects seem to move through Earth’s night sky.  

In the next slide, we can see that 13 small circles which were also drawn there (10 fully flattened, 3 half-flattened) seem to resemble the mechanical “ball bearings”, which would be needed to help these three “planetary gears” turn easily around a central axis 

This was all just a metaphor, of course, for what would be seen in Earth’s sky on the next day of August 11, namely a partial solar eclipse!  

Two weeks earlier at Hackpen Hill on July 29, the crop artists drew a mechanical “compound gear” with three different levels, as a metaphor for a new kind of lunar calendar, just after a total lunar eclipse on July 27, 2018 (see hackpenhill 2018   or hackpen hill 3 articles  ). So although we have not yet met these mysterious crop artists face-to-face, they do seem very consistent from week to week in their choice of artistic metaphors!   

A clever metaphor for solar-system astronomy  

What might their new field image of a “planetary gearbox” mean in terms of real astronomy? So far as I can tell, it seems to describe how our Sun appears to move relative to the distant fixed stars, as seen by an observer looking up at his local night sky on Earth. We call the imaginary plane of such apparent motion the “solar ecliptic”:  

Meanwhile planet Earth is actually rotating around our Sun once in every solar year, when viewed from another perspective. “Gears within gears”, one might say!  

The overall diagram which was drawn in crops shows three different internal “planetary gears” for our Sun (each a large ringed shape), plus six small “ball bearings” to represent the orbital motion of planet Earth, around each of those three large ringed shapes. So the overall period of time which has been drawn here seems possibly to be 3 full orbits of Earth around our Sun, or 3 solar years.  

Let’s watch a movie to understand such gear-like motions more clearly 

For those people who might not understand the two gear-like motions just described, I have included a small movie for increased clarity. As we stand on planet Earth (blue), and look at our Sun (yellow) over the course of a year, we seem to see that our Sun is “moving” along the ecliptic past distant, fixed stars:  

That is true in our local “stationary” perspective. Yet when we look at our solar system from a more distant outside perspective, we would see our Sun as almost stationary, while a small (blue) planet Earth rotates around it (like a “ball bearing”).  

Our Sun is often represented by a large, yellow, ringed symbol in star maps 

Our Sun is often represented by a large, yellow, ringed symbol in star maps. The standard symbol for our “Sun” (see below) thus closely resembles each of three large, multiply-ringed motifs which were drawn in crops near Mixon on August 10:   

As a corollary to this plausible interpretation, the Mixon crop picture might be meant to suggest “three full orbits of planet Earth” (a small circle shaded in blue) around our “Sun” (each a large ringed circle shaded in yellow), or “three solar years”.  

Each symbol for our Sun in this crop picture might likewise be regarded metaphorically as a kind of “planetary gear”, which rotates in the plane of the ecliptic around a central “celestial pole”. Meanwhile planet Earth revolves around each “Sun” motif in its yearly orbit, like a metaphorical “ball bearing” from a “planetary gearbox”.  

Creating solar or lunar eclipses by a “planetary gearbox”, whenever our Moon crosses the plane of the ecliptic  

By taking their metaphor of a “planetary gearbox” one step further, we can understand how a slightly-skewed orbit for our Moon, which lies 5^o off the plane of the solar ecliptic, may be able to create solar or lunar eclipses two times in every year.  

When the skewed orbit of our Moon crosses the plane of the solar ecliptic, and lies temporarily between Earth and Sun (for a new Moon), then the shadow which it creates for light from the Sun may extend through space onto the sunlit side of planet Earth, and thereby make it appear that our Sun has gotten slightly darker, or has been “eclipsed”:

Likewise when the skewed orbit of our Moon crosses the plane of the solar ecliptic, and lies temporarily on the far side of the Earth from the Sun (for a full Moon), then the shadow which planet Earth creates for light from the Sun may extend through space onto the sunlit side of the Moon, and thereby make it appear that the Moon has gotten slightly darker, or has been “eclipsed”:  

The working of astronomical bodies in our solar system is literally akin to a “clock” with “planetary gears”, which thereby enables the accurate prediction of rare eclipses far into the past or future.  

This is also why they drew a half-shaded, small circular symbol for “planet Earth” in three places along the outer perimeter of this crop picture, because that it is where both Earth and Moon must lie exactly in the plane of the solar ecliptic (the largest broad circle from this crop picture), as a pre-condition for any eclipse to occur.  

Crescent-shaped shadows of our Moon move along the face of the Earth, during a partial or total solar eclipse  

Finally whenever a solar eclipse does occur, such as on August 11, 2018, the shadow of our Moon on the Earth may create crescent-shaped shadows of a unique but predictable appearance, that will be different for every eclipse:  

Such crescent-shaped shadows, along with long curved contours of radial-shadow-intensity, were drawn around the outside of the Mixon crop picture in three different places.  

Are the crop artists just trying to teach us basic astronomy, or do they have some other subtle message in mind?  

The crop picture drawn at Mixon suggests an apparent time-period of three calendar years, presumably from August of 2018 to August of 2021. During this period of time, there will be seven (7) partial, total or annular solar eclipses: the first on August 11, 2018, the next on January 6, 2019, and so on until the seventh on June 10, 2021.  

In the landscape where this new crop picture was drawn, we can see a large number “7”, along with the schematic image of a human-looking “serpent” with “eyeglasses”, who seems to be “thinking about eclipses”. From another perspective 180^o away, we can see the schematic image of a “lion” for the constellation Leo, close to where this latest partial solar eclipse took place. We will discuss both of those interesting observations in the second (brief) part of this article. 

This 2018 crop picture near Mixon also resembles a famous crop picture near Ammersee, Germany on July 18, 2014, which seemed to show a “three-lobed spaceship” emerging from a “spacetime wormhole” (see Ammersee 2014l  ). Whether they are trying to give us some kind of eclipse-dated prediction for that event, or whether it is just an artistic coincidence between crop pictures made in Germany and those in England, would be hard to say.

Appendix 1. How many solar eclipses will there be over the next three years, from August of 2018 to August of 2021? And might the crop artists be “counting time” in terms of the number of solar eclipses remaining, until they arrive on Earth or something else important happens?  

As mentioned near the end of the main article above, this crop picture seems to suggest an overall time-period of three solar years from August of 2018 to August of 2021. Our small, blue, planet Earth will orbit around the Sun three times during that period, while our Sun will move circularly around the solar ecliptic, metaphorically like for the rotary motion of a “large gear” (the Sun) and a small “ball bearing” (Earth) in a “planetary gearbox”.  

During this upcoming three-year period, there will be seven solar eclipses visible from Earth, whether of the partial, total or annular variety:  

The Mixon crop picture appeared on August 10, 2018, just one day before the first solar eclipse out of seven on that list. How do we know that such concerns might be significant?  

Well, when we study the landscape close to this new crop picture using Google Earth, with “West-Southwest up”, we can see the image of a human “serpent” who is wearing “glasses”, and looking to his left at a large number “7” in the landscape (labelled in yellow):  

The Mixon crop picture was drawn just behind his “head”, or slightly above and to the right. This “serpent” also seems to be wearing a small “backpack”, which some traveller might wear, for example, while hiking through the mountains.

How long will it take for this human “serpent” to get where he is going? “Many moons!”, a native American might say. Yet our “serpent” friend seems to be thinking more about “3 solar years” (shaded In yellow and blue on the left), or alternatively “7 solar eclipses”.  

A similar field image was drawn near Jesuino Marcondes in Brazil on August 3, 2018. There we could see a “bearded man” in the landscape, who seemed to be “navigating by the Sun”, He was also waiting for a partial solar eclipse to take place 8 days later on August 11, 2018 (see Jesuino articles  ).  

Two other interesting aspects of the landscape near this Mixon crop picture should be mentioned. First, the small round “eye” of that human-like “serpent”, when it is studied closely using Google Earth at latitude 51.340^o N, longitude 1.938^o W (with “North up”), resembles the image of a “smiley face”.  

Secondly, when we study the Mixon crop picture and its surrounding landscape from a much broader perspective, using Google Earth centred approximately on latitude 51.338^o N, longitude 1.925^o W (with “West up”), we can see that this human-like “serpent” seems to be coming down from space, while metaphorically “riding a white horse”.  

He also seems to be getting ready to “shake hands” with someone who will meet him after he lands, just like we can see from a similar image which was carved into stone, 2000 years ago in central America (see mexico olmec 10.jpg).  

So today on August 13, 2018, there may be slightly less than three years left to go, or six solar eclipses, until these crop-suggested events take place. Could any of this speculation be true? Will the legendary “feathered serpent”, also known as “Quetzalcoatl” or “Kukulkan”, really return to Earth?  

In this final slide, we compare two related crop pictures from near Ammersee, Germany on July 18, 2014, or near MIxon, England on August 10, 2018. There are two possible ways by which to overlap these two crop pictures, as shown on the right-hand side of the slide below. In each case, they fit together nicely:  

A “three-lobed spaceship” seems to be emerging from a “spacetime wormhole” in the crop picture from Germany 2014. Now in 2018, that “three-lobed spaceship” shows at its centre (see the blue image at lower right) a schematic image of our “Sun and Earth” over three full orbits, or three solar years.  

Perhaps that is when we will see it? In August of 2016, we likewise saw drawn near Ansty a large and complex crop picture which said “MOTHERSHIP” (twice), using two sets of ten strange alphabet-symbols around the outside.

Three different strategies were used at Mixon to code subtly for the number “7”  

The number “7” (for seven solar eclipses between August 2018 and August 2021) was suggested by the Mixon crop picture in three different ways. First we can see a large number “7” in the landscape close to where it was drawn, as was shown above.  

Secondly, the number of sub-divisions in various small motifs from the Mixon 2018 crop picture numbered either 1, 2, 5 or 6. Meanwhile the number of sub-divisions in similar small motifs from the Ammersee 2014 crop picture (shown above) numbered either 3 or 4. These two crop pictures therefore combine to produce a continuous mathematical series of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 whose next number would be “7”. 

Thirdly and most cleverly, the geometrical structure of the Mixon crop picture codes quite obviously for a number “7”, if we analyse it in terms of Pascal’s Triangle:   

Our human “serpent” friend apparently saw a large number “7” in the landscape near Mixon, then drew a new crop picture nearby which was based on the first three rows of Pascal’s Triangle, along with a hexagonal-cell shape, in order to calculate it as the sum of (1) + (1 + 1) + (1 + 2 + 1). It was truly a work of both mathematical and artistic genius!

Red Collie (Dr. Horace R. Drew)

The crop-drawn image of a “planetary gearbox”: what are the crop artists trying to tell us?  

The centre of a previous crop picture at Hackpen Hill on July 29, 2018 showed a three-level “compound gear”.  

Now the centre of a new crop picture near Mixon on August 10, 2018 shows a “planetary gearbox”. It contains three large “planetary gears”, and six small “ball bearings” around each planetary gear: