Opportunities in the dark sky

Wednesday, 23 August 2023

Star Safari near Martinborough is a new star-gazing tourism venture aiming to capitalise on Wairarapa's newly minted status as an international dark sky reserve.

The Wellington Gold Awards are the premier annual celebration for the Wellington region's business community. Tonight the winners in more than 10 categories will be announced. Today we put a spotlight on Milky-Way.Kiwi a finalist in the Vibrant Gold category.

A starstruck Wairarapa couple are bringing the cosmos closer through education programmes throughout New Zealand and celestial adventures in our newest dark sky reserve.

Hari Mogoșanu, an astrobiologist, and Sam Leske, a space science educator, founded Milky-Way.Kiwi from a shared passion to ignite the spark of curiosity in young minds.

Their project, Spaceward Bound, has brought the universe to 20,000 students in 100 schools across the country.

'Our goal at Milky-Way.Kiwi is to provide a knowledge-based experience. We want people to walk away having had an amazing, enriching time,“ Leske said.

“We want to protect our incredible dark skies as an asset for the future.”

They also run a stargazing experience Star Safari in the world’s newest International dark sky reserve near Martinborough in South Wairarapa.

Milky Way.Kiwi’s Martinborough based stargazing experience Star Safari lets people peer into the heavens.

Over the last Christmas holidays they had 3300 visitors to their pop-up Wairarapa Space Science Centre, entitled ‘‘Milky-Way.Kiwi: A celestial journey inspiring tomorrow’s scientists’’.

Leske said Wairarapa and Wellington were a fantastic place to base their space education and stargazing enterprises.

“Because it’s central to all of New Zealand, it’s a great place to be. The real beauty of the Wairarapa is that dark sky reserve.

“We’re only 80km from an international airport so the opportunities are huge.”

At Star Safari they have a couple of small buildings on the top of a hill on a farm where they’ve got telescopes, binoculars, laser pointers and a bucket load of enthusiasm for the cosmological wonders in the sky.

“It’s a great way to spread the importance of the sustainability of dark skies and its ecological importance.”

Leske said with New Zealand’s growing aerospace industry, it was a good idea to get young people excited about space and its possibilities.

“What we would love to do is see Wellington as a dark sky city.”

Making the skies darker in Wellington would require more control of light pollution sources.

“It’s hard to do with a port, and an airport, and a stadium, but if it was a city that thought really hard about its lighting … that would be cool.”