Stars & Mountains

Last night I went up to the Mt John Observatory and experienced one of their tours - amazing!  I have now learned the main southern hemisphere constellations (I had already spotted an upside down Orion's belt....) but we also got to look through several very powerful telescopes and zoom in on the moon, stars, clusters, nebulae....    We were shown how to see the cloud that is our own galaxy, how to spot other galaxies and we even got a complementary drink of hot chocolate.  And just to prove it....here is a photo taken on my very own camera (admittedly, I did not do anything other than hand my camera to the expert).  If you look at this photo in a darkened room so you can actually see the stars, you may recognise Alpha Centauri, Beta Centauri and the Southern Cross.

I went back to the observatory in daylight today as they have a telescope set up to allow you to look at the sun.  No photos, but exceedingly stunning to see all the flares pulsing away from the surface of the sun!

After that, it was time for a helicopter ride.  I felt a small amount of guilt at tagging myself on to a couple who had already made a booking, but as a single traveller there was no other way of getting on a trip.  Guilt receded when the other couple were late for their own booking, and vanished altogether when the pilot decided that I should sit up front with him for the first half of the trip.

Wow.

Flying in a helicopter was not scary in the slightest.  Noisy, I'll grant you.  But it barely felt like we were moving, although the instrumentation said we were doing 110 knots....   And the views!  Wow.  I have many many lots photos, most of which didn't come out at all and a host of video footage that I haven't watched yet.  But here is me standing at about 7000ft height, with Mt Cook and Mt Tasman in the background, and that dirty grey thing in the base of the valley is the Tasman Glacier.

And just to make you jealous, I finally got the blue to stand out properly.  This is looking over Lake Pukaki, with Mt Cook majestic in the distance.

Going to head to Queenstown tomorrow to book lots of fun things for next week, then will see what beckons for the weekend.  Possibly Invercargill / Caitlins / Stewart Island?  Who knows!  The world might not be my oyster, but the southern part of NZ certainly is :-)