Naseby Night Sky Tours<\/a> in 2018, a year after moving to Naseby from Dunedin. Originally from the UK, Bishop studied astrophysics at Queen Mary university in London, and although he never pursued it as a career, his fascination did not waver.<\/p>\nAfter experiencing stargazing in Tekapo in the Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve, where stargazing has become a major drawcard, Bishop saw the opportunity to do something locally. \u201cI think people probably thought it rather strange that someone\u2019s come up from Dunedin to start an astronomy tourism business from the corner of some farm, but I have had an awful lot of support,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
The Aurora Australis, seen on one of Paul Bishop\u2019s night sky tours. Photograph: Paul Bishop<\/p>\n
In Tekapo, you can stargaze from a hot pool or purpose-built crater or experience the stars through a virtual reality museum experience. In Naseby, stargazing is a little more rustic. After getting confirmation from Bishop that the conditions are good, I have dinner in the Naseby pub, then head out of the town to farming country, driving carefully over bumpy gravel roads until I see Bishop\u2019s headlamp in the dark.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s off-peak and a Monday night, so it\u2019s just the two of us. Bishop kicks off the tour by using his pointer to show me the easily recognisable stars and the broad sweep of the Milky Way. Then he positions his sleek Newtonian telescope to look at two of the stars in Alpha Centauri, our closest star system.<\/p>\n
\u2018Only when you look up at night do you see your true place in the universe.\u2019 Photograph: Joe Nidd<\/p>\n
Over the next hour or so, we peek at the Jewel Box, an open star cluster that looks like a tipped-over box of diamonds, view the Orion Nebula, a swirl of interstellar dust and gas, the 47 Tucanae \u2013 a cluster of up to 1m stars \u2013 and finally Saturn and its giant moon Titan. It is, as Bishop says, a tour through the history of the universe. By the time we\u2019re finished, my feet are frozen, and the sky is as dark as black velvet.<\/p>\n
When I speak to Auckland-based DarkSky International committee member Gareth Davies, who championed Naseby\u2019s application, he expresses the feeling perfectly: \u201cOnly when you look up at night do you see your true place in the universe \u2026 our ancestors did it, and we see exactly the same sky that they saw. There\u2019s nothing like it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many animals and birds rely on the stars for navigation. Photograph: Paul Bishop<\/p>\n
Davies wants his children and grandchildren to experience the same feeling, which is why he is involved in the dark sky program. Educating people about light pollution and its impact on animals and birds that rely on the stars for navigation is another pressing reason.<\/p>\n
As I drive back to my accommodation with the car\u2019s heater on full blast to defrost my toes, Naseby is asleep, its street lighting suitably dim.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the last strip of pink on the horizon fades to indigo on the Maniototo Plain in Otago,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-419969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}