Dark Skies at Lake Tekapo

Evening of Thursday 5th March
Lake Tekapo is a designated Dark Skies area of New Zealand. James and I signed up for a stargazing and hot pools experience. Oh my goodness this was amazing! It didn’t start until 10.15 p.m. so after a leisurely dinner we went for a walk around the village centre until it was time to check in. It was very dark because there is minimal street lighting and it’s a muted red colour so as not to pollute the darkness. We were taken to Tekapo Springs by minibus and started our star-gazing under the instruction of the enthusiastic young guides. One of the guides gave a commentary while we looked upwards, and then took turns using the telescopes. Although there were about twenty-eight of us we were still able to get plenty of time taking turns at the four telescopes. Hot chocolate and blankets were available to keep us warm. We saw so much! I really felt that I learned a lot. James and I had already figured out earlier that the moon looks upside down when viewed from New Zealand. To be fair, it’s not the moon that is upside down - it’s us! That means that the moon waxes and wanes in the opposite direction from what we are used to. The same goes for the constellation of Orion and his belt. Beetlejuice and Rigel are still at diagonally opposite ends of the constellation but “upside down” as is Orion’s sword. Even more exciting to me were the stars that we cannot see from the northern hemisphere, such as Alpha Centauri (our nearest star at 4.3 light years away) and Beta Centauri. These two star systems point to the Southern Cross. The Southern Hemisphere doesn’t have the equivalent of a “North Star” in the centre of the astronomical south, so to calculate that you need to point at the Southern Cross with one hand and at the bright star Achernar with your other hand, then bring your hands together and then you are roughly pointing at the south celestial pole. So far we could see all this with the naked eye, and also the Milky Way and the far away Magellan clouds which are in fact galaxies. Through the telescopes we were able to see the Tarantula Nebula (yes it does look like one), the Jewel Box Nebula (different colours of ancient stars), and the Sunflower star cluster which is much younger, only a few million years old. It was all so informative and fun, hopefully we can do some star-gazing in Ullapool this summer if we take the telescope up to the cottage.
However the evening was not over. We quickly got changed into our swimming costumes and hopped into the hot pool, where we floated around on cleverly designed “underwater hammocks” (these supported your head and knees so that the rest of your body could stay cosy under the surface of the water). We were able to gaze at the stars we had just learned about, while one of the guides sonorously told us some Maori creation stories, which sounded just as far-fetched as every other culture’s creation stories.