Fairley is a small town which was the subject of an earlier post on the people and culture of New Zealand. We booked a tour of the Mt. John Observatory when we arrived at the TOP 10 Holiday Park on Sunday, February 23. The weather was mostly cloudy and it was sprinkling rain but I figured we needed to take the chance if we were going to have a chance to visit the observatory. They do day tours but I was most interested in the night tours. Two night tours were offered, one starting at 8:30 about the time of sunset and the second started at 11:30 and ended at 1:30 a.m. I chose the second tour because I wanted the skies to be as dark as possible.

As the afternoon wore on, the showers stopped and the sky started to clear. By 9:45 as we were getting ready to make the one hour drive to Lake Tekapo where the tour company headquarters is located. We drove into town and found the tour company easily, it was the only thing open at 10:30. On the way in, we saw a sign indicating that the area is an International Dark Sky Reserve. The area is sparsely populated and there are lighting restrictions that limit the types of light fixtures which can be used for outdoor lighting. This makes for really dark skies. The Mount John Observatory is located further south than any other research observatory.

We were taken to the observatory by van and then treated to really dark skies. A few of the southern constellations were pointed out to us. Most of the southern constellations are made of rather dim stars which makes them difficult to outline even in dark skies. There was a person on staff who was an expert in astrophotography. He took cameras from everyone who wanted and then did long term photos with a specially designed mount which would hold six or eight cameras. I surrendered my camera to him. When I got the camera back, I had several very nice photos of the southern Milky Way, the Large Magellanic Cloud and some scenery shots. These were all made with my camera and lens. Meanwhile we got to enjoy looking through some nice telescopes including a 16” telescope inside a small dome.

The night was cold which enhanced the dark skies. Just as our observing session was ending at 1:30 a.m. the moon was rising over the hills to the east. It was perfect timing. We had the whole two hour session in the best possible dark skies. Louise who doesn’t like cold was excited about the night and enjoyed the astronomy. We arrived back at the holiday park just before 3:00 a.m. We were very grateful that the owner had granted us a late departure the next morning. Our stay in Fairley had rewarded us with a wonderful evening of astronomy.