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from
The Albuquerque Journal (New Mexico)
Sunday, July 4, 2004
Star Gazers Saw July 4 Light Show in 1054
by Rae Ann Kumelos and Philip Mahon
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Seven centuries before the first Independence Day, July 4, 1776, residents of what is now New Mexico and the Southwest awoke to a show of fireworks in the early morning sky of July 4, 1054.
A supernova—the spectacular explosion of a massive star in the  constellation of Taurus the Bull—created a display of celestial light so bright it outshone every object in the sky. On that long-ago July 4 morning, the new, very bright point of light appeared near the crescent moon, an event later documented on a Chaco Canyon cliff painting, close to what is today called Pueblo Penasco.
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Pecked into rock (a petroglyph), or painted on rock (a pictograph), possible visual records of this event are found in Baja California, California, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas. Visible with the crescent moon from the Rockies to the California coast, it is highly likely that this scene was recorded by early American peoples at sites known to be inhabited in the year 1054.
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Since we do not find specific written records of ancient ancestral pueblo people, petroglyphs and pictographs of the 1054 supernova event being witnessed and recorded in the American Southwest are dependent upon speculative evidence. However, this is not the case in the Chinese records from that time period.
“Star Gazers Saw July 4 Light Show in 1054" by Philip Mahon and Rae Ann Kumelos from The Albuquerque Journal, July 4, 2004, page 5. Copyright © 2004 by The Albuquerque Journal. Reproduced by permission of the copyright holder.
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