ASTRO-TOURISM AT LAKE TEKAPO
NZ’s unique Dark Sky project uses telescopes to give visitors an insight into the universe.
Part two of a series featuring New Zealanders unlocking the potential of metal, brought to you by the American Express Platinum Card – now made of metal.
U sing powerful telescopes, visitors to the Dark Sky Project are able to bear witness to a sight that is as “humbling as it is extraordinary”, according to the co-founder of the project, Graeme Murray. These man-made metal creations are keys that unlock a whole new world, giving people the power to see the wonder of the universe from the special vantage point of New Zealand’s Lake Tekapō.
Now one of New Zealand’s most popular natural wonders, the world-leading stargazing trips at Mt John, have blended cutting edge astro-technology with ancient indigenous wisdom for an experience leaving most visitors in awe.
“For people from big cities, who might have lost touch with the night sky, it’s a pretty sobering moment to be on the top of Mt John and have the whole hemisphere to look at,” he says.
“You’re actually looking back in time – you’re almost defying time – because most of the stars you’re looking at now have taken hundreds of thousands of light years to reach you. It’s the mystery and the intrigue of that – it touches the soul of a lot of people.”
It’s an experience that, for a long time, only the scientific astronomic community had access to. While they had technologies that would unveil the beauty beyond those night skies, there was no way for the general population to see such wonders. But the hard work and long-term thinking of the team behind the Dark Sky Project – and the telescopes they brought to New Zealand – would eventually change all that. When describing the pilgrimage that led to the creation of the Dark Sky Project, Murray describes it as a “whole chapter of miracles.”
It all started back in the late 1990s when Graeme’s co-founder, Hide Ozawa, was trying to help forge a connection between Nagoya University in Japan and a university in New Zealand. At that stage, Murray was in the first stage of what would be a very brief retirement after a career in flying – but Hide knew his old friend would be a good ally in getting this deal done.
They approached Professor Philip Butler, head of Astronomy at Canterbury University, offering to help with the funds themselves, kick-starting a process that would eventually see the Japanese government put $8 million into the project, providing a giant telescope.
This telescope, the Micro-lensing Observations in Astrophysics (MOA), gave almost unprecedented access to the wonders of the solar system – making the University of Canterbury Mt John Observatory site a leader in astronomical research.
But when it came to astro-tourism, it was a slower start. One night, on top of Mt John, Hide revealed his frustration with Kiwis for taking the night sky for granted: “’If we had a sky like this in Japan, we would create a park to protect it.”
That gave Murray an idea – what if they did exactly that and made the Mackenzie district an officially protected site? So he and Hide teamed with Professor John Hearnshaw from The University of Canterbury and the Hon. Margaret Austin, the New Zealand representative at UNESCO and a woman so good at getting things done that Murray compares working with her to “attaching yourself to the tail of a Spitfire and trying to hang on.”
It worked, with the Dark Sky Project nominated by UNESCO to be the pilot scheme for the first world heritage site in the sky.
“It set the whole show on fire,” Murray says. “We had over 50 documentary teams visit us within a year.” Sitting down with CNN one night, they told him that they estimated 100 million people around the world were now learning about the Dark Sky Project and the famous star-light sky over Lake Tekapō.
Pre-Covid, the tourism board in Japan told Hide that the project was the #1 reason Japanese tourists were travelling to New Zealand.
“Humans’ true heritage comes from the night sky and we have this very special night sky at Lake Tekapō, one of the darkest skies in the world,” Murray says. It is a fitting tribute to the importance of our skies – and their famed heritage.
“New Zealand is one of the only countries in the world that was founded because of the stars,” Murray says. In Te Ao Māori, “everything revolved around the stars – moving between the islands, planting the crops.”
One of the reasons Dark Sky teamed up with Ngāi Tahu to create the world-leading Dark Sky Project facility in July 2019 was to regenerate their ancestral history; Murray says there was a fear younger generations were starting to lose that indigenous knowledge.
To help bridge the gap between tourists and the night sky itself, the Dark Sky Project now has a range of telescopes that give anyone access to the universe above. Combining both cutting-edge technologies with Victorian artistry, the man-made metal creations are a sight to behold. One of which, the Brashear telescope, was created in 1894. It lived a fabled life first in America and then in New Zealand but had been in storage for a large part of its recent history. It was resuscitated by Dallas Poll, one of the head jewellers on the
Lord Of The Rings series, who dedicated two years of his life to bringing this 38-foot telescope back to life.
The Dark Sky Project’s telescopes at both Mount John Observatory (including a 16” Schmidt-Cassegrain reflector), and the Cowans Hill private observatory on the eastern side of Takapo, provide some of the most sophisticated tools for recreational astronomy in the world. Natural wonders like The Milky Way, once only available to the general public in books and photos, are now accessible to everyone thanks to this technology.
With 2022 being the first official Matariki public holiday, Murray is confident Kiwis will start paying attention to the beauty that lies above Aotearoa just as much to the beauty that lies within it.