Auckland Te Whatu Stardome for matariki – A MOTAT SOCIETY EXCURSION (June 2025)

The Auckland Stardome is sited on the southern slopes of One Tree Hill/Maungakiekie, in the domain of Cornwall Park. It is a dark location at night. Walking the rough ground is slow going, but inside, it is warm and bright. There are lots of people gathering: children in groups and with parents emerge excitedly from the just completed session. In large rooms there are mobile displays of the solar system and the exploration of it, physical models and samples of space rock.

Our group has come to learn about Matariki.

Matariki is the Pleiades star cluster and there is a celebration of its first rising in late June or early July. The rising marks the beginning of the new year in the Māori lunar calendar. A public holiday in New Zealand acknowledges this event for all.

The Skydome is not an observatory in the classic model, where people are allowed one at a time to look through a telescope – as I experienced as a kid – but a movie theatre where the live sky is projected onto the interior surface of a dome to an audience seated in semi reclined seats (zip your pockets to prevent stuff sliding out) to see the drama of the night sky. The presentation is dramatic and cinematic with light and sound – the birth of the universe cannot have been quiet, even though no one was around to hear it.  The show was rewarding in its shared knowledge and understandings and storytelling

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Matariki is about renewal for the new year ahead and reflection on the year that was. The stars of the cluster personified are as a legendary family. All families are complicated entities, and this one is no exception.

Our group enjoyed the experience very much, some did queue outside to use an actual telescope to observe Mars from Earth in the night sky, (about 3 to 22 light-minutes from Earth, depending on their positions in orbit).

- Bruce Wild, MOTAT Society