the east wind
the south wind
the south-west wind
the west wind
the north-west wind
the north wind
the north-east wind
the south-east wind
Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford
gallery in the observation room
observatory observing room
common room in the observatory
Green Templeton common room
observatory common room
miscredited by Cherwell News
spring view from Victor Street
springtime at Freud
Freud in spring
old wall to be demolished
Freud and the Observatory
the cosy lights of Walton Street
desolate-looking towpath
sink that ugly boom
Aquarius the water-bearer
Pisces the fish
Aries sign
Taurus sign
Gemini sign
Cancer sign
Leo sign
Virgo sign
Libra & Scorpio
Sagittarius the Archer
Coade stone panel
Coade stone panel
observatory in the winter sun
open view of the observatory
sunlight on the world
observatory tower
south side of the tower
the south winds
globe on the Tower of the Winds
Atlas and Hercules
Zephyros the west wind
Lips the south-west wind
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Below the level of the balcony are the Signs of the Zodiac modelled for the Coade factory by J C F Rossi, who took his designs from the Farnese Globe, a celestial globe (now in the Museo Nationale, Naples) which has survived from Roman times and is thought to be a Roman copy of a Greek original. A map of an 'Ancient Globe of the Heavens' taken from the Farnese Globe had been published in Spence's Polymetis in 1747, and it was this map that Rossi used as a model for the Observatory's Zodiac signs. The number of Zodiac panels is not twelve but eleven – the signs for Scorpio (the scorpion) and Libra (the scales) are combined both on the Farnese Globe and on the Observatory.
www.gtc.ox.ac.uk/about/history/radcliffe-observatory
It has long been recognised that the names given by both Greeks and Romans to the signs of the zodiac derive from Greek mythology. For example, Aries is the ram whose golden fleece was recovered by Jason, Taurus the bull whose form Zeus assumed when he abducted Europa, and Leo the lion slain by Herakles (Hercules) as the first of his twelve labours.
The curious form of Capricornus, the goat with a fish-tail, derives from the myth in which the god Pan jumped into the water just as he was changing shape in an attempt to escape from the monster Typhon. While the half of him above the water assumed the shape of a goat, the lower half became a fish.
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