From Heritage New Zealand, Summer 2009

by Bette Flagler

The observatory at Mt John is encouraging a growing number of visitors to look skyward, while initiatives are being established to confer heritage status upon Tekapo’s dazzling night sky

I remember as a child being woken by my parents and dragged into the backyard to stare at the Northern Lights as they danced across the sky. Many years later when I sailed from that hemisphere to this one, I watched Orion’s Belt sink closer to the horizon as the Big Dipper slowly gave way to the Southern Cross. Out there, making my way across the Pacific, I said goodbye to the one thing I knew to be constant.

The moon and the stars: they are the symbols of romance, mystery and culture. They are also the tools of navigation and scientific discovery. And they are disappearing from view. Light and air pollution have obscured them for nearly half the world’s population and every year more people are losing sight of the stars. It’s hard to believe – sitting here under some of the clearest skies in the world – but only a small percentage of people globally can see the Milky Way.

Even in New Zealand our cities are beginning to outtwinkle our stars. Perhaps New Zealanders have a particular affinity for what is above. “The sky is part of the holistic understanding of Maori sense of place,” says Te Kenehi Teira, manager of the NZHPT Maori Heritage team. “To Maori the sky is more than just a reference. Ranginui, the sky father, is one of the primordial parents of all Maori whakapapa. Further, once someone recognises the night sky and the patterns it holds, the door to enormous knowledge is opened.”

Maori elders, he explains, have long passed down stories about the arrival of Matariki (Pleiades) in the night sky at the beginning of the Maori year and how the counting of the moons from that time determines when planting, fishing and travel will be successful and safe.But Matariki doesn’t always appear. To find it, ancestral knowledge identifies the three stars that form the stern post on te waka tamarereti; this is the waka that sits on the horizon (which some of us call Orion). Orion is part of a constellation that is also important to Maori for safe travel. The ancestors would have depended upon it, along with other stars, as they navigated across the oceans.

Those of us whose heritage is European can also thank our lucky stars. In January 2009 former cabinet minister Margaret Austin addressed the International Year of Astronomy launch at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in Paris. After explaining the importance of the sky to New Zealanders from the Maori perspective as described by Te Kenehi, Margaret reflected that: “Few nations can claim as New Zealand can  that astronomy was pivotal to its founding and the principal motivation which led to exploration and eventual European settlement of the land. “Captain James Cook first came to New Zealand in 1769 after observing the transit of Venus in Tahiti, for no other reason than to find it, map it and later to make extensive astronomical observations for determining latitude and longitude.” Indeed, if it weren’t for the night sky, none of us would be here.

“This is part of our heritage,” says Graeme Murray, director of Tekapo-based stargazing tour company Earth and Sky, “and we are taking it for granted.” Graeme and the guides who work for his company are reminded daily of the treasures in the brilliant sky above when they witness the reactions of tourists – whether from Auckland or London – who take a moment to look up.Even Te Kenehi admits that while many marae in the Hauraki Gulf, for example, are named after sky phenomena and many stories in Maoridom have to do with the sky and stars, when we become immersed in our busy city lives it’s easy to take what’s “up there” for granted. We need to defend and protect the night sky, not just for ourselves but for the generations that follow and for the conservation of our nocturnal species.Which brings us to the point that heritage – and historic places – are above us as well as around us.  

Te Kenehi suggests that, from a cultural point of view, the concept already exists. Margaret’s address to UNESCO was in support of something more formal: Tekapo’s bid to create a starlight reserve with the long-term goal of New Zealand having a Park in the Sky.First, a step back. While the significance of the night sky might be philosophically important to all of us, it has had functional applications to the Mackenzie region since 1965 when the University of Canterbury Mt John Observatory was installed. The site was chosen because of the characteristics of the local sky: its large number of clear nights, its stable and transparent atmosphere and its incredibly dark sky. At 1030 metres above sea level, the Mt John Observatory is home to six telescopes and is operated by the University of Canterbury’s Department of Physics and Astronomy in partnership with Nagoya University in Japan.

One of the primary sites for astronomy research in New Zealand, it houses six telescopes including New Zealand’s largest; at 1.8 metres across, the behemoth can observe 50 million stars on a clear night.

Graeme Murray is also on the Mackenzie tourism development board and, prior to Earth and Sky, operated scenic flights through his company Air Safaris. He retired from that business in the early 2000s and thought he’d play a lot of golf. That plan coincided with the town’s cranking up a notch its dedication to protecting the darkness above.

In 2001, the Mackenzie District Council held a public meeting at which John Hearnshaw, a professor of astronomy at the University of Canterbury and director of Mt John Observatory, spoke. The professor warned the group that if the town allowed the light pollution normally associated with development to occur, the chances of Mt John surviving 10 to 15 years was quite remote. “That shocked people like me,” says Graeme. “I was very conscious that we didn’t want to lose Mt John.”

Also at the meeting was Hide Ozawa who was taking between 12,000 and 14,000 Japanese tourists annually on star-watching tours in the Mackenzie. “That was all going on quietly under our skies and we didn’t even know it was happening,” says Graeme. “Hide was possibly pioneering star watching in New Zealand. He kept pointing to the sky saying that in Japan they don’t have this, that we New Zealanders don’t know how precious those stars and the night sky are, that we should be protecting this very special aspect and we should have a Park in the Sky.”

The Mackenzie District Council canvassed the public and developed its future plan called Tekapo Vision. One of the cornerstones of the plan was that the region should protect its night sky and by-laws regulating the type and amount of outdoor lighting that could be used were enacted. Concurrently, the Park in the Sky concept was considered.

In 2002 Nagoya University secured funding from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science & Technology of Japan to purchase a state-of-the-art telescope for Mt John. But the telescope needed a building. Funds for the dome and computer rooms were donated by Graeme Murray and Hide Ozawa; in return, the two formed Earth and Sky and were given exclusive tourist rights to the Mt John Observatory.

In 2007 Earth and Sky installed a 40-centimetre telescope for public viewing. Last year Earth and Sky had bookings for  17,000 “astro-tourists”, 80 percent of whom were international visitors.

Meanwhile, under the same sky but on the other side of the planet, people were also thinking about the stars. UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre (WHC) was tasked with developing a “multidisciplinary approach to the conservation of both cultural and natural heritage of outstanding universal value”. It currently lists 890 properties that form “part of the cultural and natural heritage which the World Heritage Committee considers as having outstanding universal value”.

New Zealand is home to three: Te Wahipounamu (southwest New Zealand including the Westland and Mount Cook National Park and the Fiordland National Park), Tongariro National Park and the New Zealand sub-Antarctic Islands.

In 2005 UNESCO’s Astronomy and World Heritage Initiative was established with the aim to “identify, safeguard and promote cultural properties connected with astronomy” and proclaimed 2009 the International Year of Astronomy.

In 2007 UNESCO held an international conference at La Palma in the Canary Islands to discuss the idea of starlight reserves. The Declaration in Defence of the Night Sky and the Right to Starlight was approved at the conference and the proposal to develop a starlight reserve concept was recommended. Working groups were developed to define the values and set criteria for areas that might be considered for starlight reserve designation if the idea were formally accepted by the WHC. Graeme Murray, Margaret Austin and representatives from the Mackenzie council, the Tekapo and Mt Cook communities, the University of Canterbury, Mt John Observatory and the Department of Conservation formed a working party to bid for the area around the Mt John Observatory to be considered for starlight reserve status.The area includes Lake Tekapo and its tributary, the Godley Valley and the Mt Cook National Park within Te Wahipounamu South West New Zealand World Heritage Park.

In March 2009 New Zealand was invited to present a case study for consideration to the working group on starlight reserves in the Canary Islands. In June the starlight reserve concept was again discussed at a WHC meeting in Seville and in October Margaret travelled back to the UNESCO general conference and in November to the Canary Islands where the thematic study including the nominated case studies for starlight reserves was finalised. In addition to Tekapo, five areas in four other regions around the world are being considered for starlight reserve status: Hawaii, Austria, Spain and Chile.

Tekapo, says Margaret, is a mixed-criteria site. Not only does it have scientific research but it is also ticks the boxes of astro-tourism, natural landscape and possibly bio-protection of species and their habitat. It all sounds perfectly straightforward but the road to stardom is rarely smooth and the road to UNESCO world-heritage status for a piece of the sky is proving fraught with challenges.

“The main problem,” says Margaret, “is that UNESCO’s conventions do not include the space above heritage sites. Acceptance by the World Heritage Committee at its 2010 meeting will pave the way for future potential inscription.”

“I think Maori in general would love the idea,” says the NZHPT’s Te Kenehi. “But most would say Tekapo isn’t enough. We’d like the sky over the whole of New Zealand to be considered our heritage site.”