Places · Dark sky
Aoraki Mackenzie Dark Sky Reserve
One of the first gold-tier reserves anywhere, covering 4,300 km² of the Southern Alps. The Magellanic Clouds are naked-eye objects here, which is the practical definition of a dark sky.
- Where
- Canterbury, New Zealand
- Coordinates
- 43.73°S 170.10°E
- Since
- 2012
- On the map
- Show me
- More
- darksky.org
The sky from here
Measured at these coordinates the sky is zone 1: pristine, which is Bortle 1–2 and a naked-eye limit of about magnitude 7.2–8.0. The Milky Way casts a shadow. Airglow is visible, the zodiacal light reaches across the sky, and the darkest places on Earth look like this.
Of the 110 Messier objects, 58 are an unaided-eye target from a sky this dark, 107 are comfortable in 10×50s and 107 in a 130mm reflector. There is nowhere darker worth driving to; this is already among the better skies on the planet.
Every night of the year reaches full astronomical darkness at this latitude; the Sun always gets its eighteen degrees below the horizon, which places much further from the equator cannot say.
At its highest the galactic centre stands 75° up, which is the difference between a Milky Way with depth in it and a smear along the horizon. Of the 110 Messier objects, none are circumpolar and 14 never rise.
Ptolemy's Cluster, Butterfly Cluster and Southern Pinwheel pass close to the zenith from this latitude — an object at the zenith is being seen through the least air it will ever be seen through, and the difference against the same object low in the south is not subtle.
Against that, Whirlpool Galaxy, Little Dumbbell and Pinwheel Galaxy never clear the horizon here at all. No amount of aperture or patience changes that; the only remedy is to travel.
Read at 43.73°S 170.10°E. Darkness is estimated rather than measured; everything else follows from the latitude and holds along the whole parallel. How accurate this is.
Nearby
Questions
What part of the sky never rises at Aoraki Mackenzie Dark Sky Reserve?
Everything north of declination +46°. From 43.7°S that is a cap 44° in radius centred on the north celestial pole, which is 14% of the whole celestial sphere. It is out of reach permanently rather than seasonally: no time of year and no instrument brings it above the horizon. The matching 14% around the south celestial pole is the same geometry inverted, and never sets.
How many hours of true darkness does Aoraki Mackenzie Dark Sky Reserve get?
From about 3 hours 46 minutes at the thin end of the year, near 21 December, up to 11 hours 36 minutes around 21 June. The measure is astronomical darkness — the Sun a full eighteen degrees under — not simply the hours between sunset and sunrise. Unlike sites further from the equator, no part of the year here is written off entirely.
When is the Milky Way best from Aoraki Mackenzie Dark Sky Reserve?
Around 17 June, when the galactic centre crosses the meridian at local midnight — and because this is a southern site, that is also midwinter, with the longest and darkest nights of the year underneath it. The brightest part of the Milky Way reaches its highest point on the best nights available, rather than during a summer that will not go dark. That coincidence is most of the reason the world's large optical observatories are in the southern hemisphere.
How far is Aoraki Mackenzie Dark Sky Reserve from the other sites on this map?
Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 is the nearest thing to it here — 815 km to the north-east. The nearest other dark sky is Warrumbungle National Park, 2,310 km to the north-west. These are straight-line distances over the surface, not driving distances, and in this part of the world the two can differ considerably.