Mt. John Observatory

Hello all - Steve here. Thought I'd give AK a break and give a quick update on my trip to Mt. John Observatory at Tekapo on the South Island. We'd been to Tekapo on the Easter weekend, but it's such an amazing area I was happy to return. One of my advisors was there for two weeks using one of the telescopes, so I joined him for a week to learn how to drive a big telescope and run a spectrograph.

My flight out of Wellington left just before 7am. The flight followed the east coast of the South Island down to Christchurch, so I had a great view of the Southern Alps out my window at sunrise.

Going to Mt. John in the middle of winter, I was hoping to find the summit covered in several feet of snow, and experience something akin to a Canadian winter. But the summit was completely bare - the mountains surrounding it were covered in snow, but none was to be found at the observatory. I stayed at the closest building, and used the telescope in the attached dome.

This is the telescope we were using - it has a main mirror 1 metre across. The green part is the mount that moves it around the sky, and the white disk on the right contains the many weights needed to counterbalance the telescope on the mount.

Here I am next to the telescope at the start of a night, moving it to the first star. The telescope is all computer controlled, but it's more fun to move it with the hand paddle.

These days professional astronomers can spend a whole night observing and never have to look at the sky because everything is controlled by computers. Mt. John was no different; these are the computers that run the telescope and the spectrograph. Luckily though, a lot of it was automated, which meant I could sneak outside now and then and take a look at the stars. And I'm glad I could - Tekapo has been in the news for being an International Dark Sky reserve, and I can see why. The Milky Way arching overhead, from one side of the sky to the other, was a spectacular sight.

This was the view outside during the day - the distant mountain ranges surrounding Mt. John and the brilliant blue colour of Lake Tekapo.

And one last picture from town, of the famous little church on the edge of Lake Tekapo.