Stargazing in Lake Tekapo

A dark drive to see dark skies

Loaded up with Arctic jackets, a fetching moon lanyard, and our newly acquired torches, we are driven up to the Mount John Observatory by a bus driver who is far too chipper for 12.30am! Our driver gives us an introduction to the town of Tekapo, a few local tales, and an explanation of what exactly is a “Dark Sky Reserve”. A few jokes are thrown in here and there, but he seems to get the most pleasure out of telling us that he needs to navigate the Mount John access road without his headlights.

We have a feeling that our driver may have done this drive in the dark more than once, so we do make it up the hill in one piece.

Astronomer guides

Yellow spotlights dance in the dark outside our bus greeting us to Mount John. This must be our guides! The dancing spotlights are just a hint of the enthusiasm evoked by our stargazing guides, all of which are either astrologists themselves or astrologists in the making.

We get straight into it, following our guide up to the main observatory building surrounded by three large domes and tens of high-tech telescopes.

Welcome to the Dark Sky Reserve

Milky Way and The Southern Cross

Before sticking our eyes in lenses, our guide gives us an orientation of the night sky, pointing out constellations with a powerful green laser pen. During this time, our eyes start to adjust. Where before we could only see the brightest of stars, (which was still a better night’s sky than most places), now our eyes start to adjust to see a greater density of stars, even to the point where we can see the haze of the Milky Way!

One of the most prominent constellations in the sky is The Southern Cross, including the second nearest star to Earth which is only a mere 4.3 light-years away! Our guide invites us to do an exercise to use The Southern Cross for navigation like the early explorers, which might come in handy knowing how unreliable Google Maps can be sometimes…

Oh how we all wish we had an astrophotographer

Not only does this orientation of the night’s sky allow our eyes to take in the wonders of the universe, but it gives some of the guides a moment to give us a hot chocolate each and for the astrophotographers to gather our cameras and work their magic. As far as our friends know, we are coming out of this tour as professional astrophotographers.