Mt. John Observatory

Tonight we feel very small in the world. In fact, we feel small in this universe. This trip around the world that we’ve embarked upon seems like a walk in the park in comparison to what we’ve seen tonight in the night sky at Mt. John Observatory in the Lake Tekapo area.

This area of New Zealand’s south island is rated by international astronomers as the darkest skies in the world – which means there is no light pollution and weather conditions are consistently good for star gazing.

The Mt. John Observatory is 3076 feet above sea level, which eliminates much of the atmospheric distortion which clouds telescopic images. There are many telescopes on site, but one of the most fantastic ones was called the ‘Moa’ telescope which is a 1.8 meter prime focus reflector – the largest telescope in New Zealand.

Taking in this observatory tour was on Kari’s bucket list for our New Zealand trip. We arrived in Lake Tekapo without really planning for the weather, but lucked out with super clear skies and no moon. In fact, it was ‘dark sky week’ at the observatory – which means the prime time viewing. We were lucky to book the last four spots on the late evening tour – which started at 10:30 and lasted for two hours.

We weren’t exactly sure how Kai and Vea would handle this tour being so late at night and being mostly outside in the cold temperatures at this high altitude. Luckily we had been to the Cadbury Chocolate Factory tour in Dunedin earlier in the day, and were well stocked with a multitude of chocolate samples and purchases that we packed away in our backpack for the tour. This was our ‘backup’ in case Kai and Vea started getting sleepy eyes during the star gazing.

We all got outfitted with thick down parkas and red LED flashlights to guide our steps in the dark night (red light is non-pollutive to the telescopes in the observatory). Since there is no public access to the main observatory outside of a tour, we were very excited to see the images from some of these massive telescopes.

Kai and Vea getting suited up in down jackets for the cold altitude

The ‘Terantula Nebula’ – 200,000 light years away!

The ‘Jewel Box’ cluster – 6,000 light years away.

The night sky over Lake Tekapo.

A long exposure of the southern hemisphere night sky showing our Milky Way Galaxy.

Throughout the tour, we were able to see images from planets, stars and galaxies in the southern hemisphere – which are new to us being familiar with only the northern hemisphere’s night sky. It’s a totally different perspective looking up and not seeing our northern constellations like the big and little dipper. It was really cool to identify the most recognized aspect of the southern hemisphere – which is the ‘southern cross’ – which we learned comprises the primary design element of most of the southern hemisphere’s country flags.

We saw some incredible things only visible during these types of clear / dark nights – like The Jewel Box Cluster, the large and small Clouds of Magellan – including the Tarantula Nebula. Some of the images we saw were light from distant galaxies as far away as 300 million light years! Saturn was incredible too – Kai and Vea couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw the rings around the planet! It was so clear that it looked unreal. There was even an astro-photographer on site who helped Norrie with long exposure photographs with his camera.

It was a spectacular tour that we feel fortunate to have experienced. We each saw many shooting stars during the night, and were all overjoyed to see our familiar ‘Three Brooks Star’. Kai and Vea didn’t need an ounce of chocolate during the tour since it was so engaging and unique – and were all very inspired by the experience.

All 4 now.