Hamurana Skies Limited: Astronomy Experiences

23/05/2025

Hamurana Skies is temporarily closed for maintenance. We are making some changes to our business and will be open again soon.

17/05/2025

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18m4aTxDAM/

Have you ever wondered about those bright stars in the sky really are? Are they a star, or a planet? Currently the planet Venus shines very brightly high in eastern morning sky. A few weeks ago Venus was in the evening sky.

Planet comes from the Greek word for wanderer. The ancients noticed that stars were fixed as they moved across the sky from east to west, but planets moved independently and even changed direction. Why?

Meanwhile stars moved in orderly groups or constellations across the sky. Over a period of months constellations proceed from east to west across the sky rising and setting earlier every day. Eventually the constellations disappear from the evening sky and reappear in the morning sky about a month later. The most well-known example of this in Aotearoa New Zealand might be the star grouping of Matariki which has significance in the Māori Calendar.

Matariki is a culturally significant star cluster right across the world. Pleiades as Matariki is known in Europe even appears in a 20,000 year old cave painting in the Lascaux Cave in France.

To learn more, why not join the Rotorua Astronomical Society. We are a group of astronomy enthusiast in Rotorua who like to look through telescopes and everything about space.

01/05/2025

Our YouTube pick of the day.

The remarkable story of the determination and courage of a generation. A tribute to three brave astronauts and the thousands of men and women behind them dur...

23/04/2025

We had nice but quite cold astronomy with Peter, Barbara, and Brian joining us last night. Thanks for coming, it was a pleasure to have you here at Hamurana Skies.

Despite having a cracking morning that’s ideal for mowing the lawns we are not expecting weather conditions that will be suitable for getting the telescopes out over the next few days and so unfortunately, we will not be open tonight or tomorrow evening.

Enjoy ANZAC weekend. I’m sure that there will be some interesting thoughts expressed by speakers at dawn parades across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand tomorrow morning.

21/04/2025

https://darksky.org/what-we-do/events/dark-sky-week/

What is International Dark Sky Week? International Dark Sky Week is a worldwide event that draws attention to light pollution, promotes simple solutions to mitigate the issue…

16/04/2025

https://hamuranaskies.co.nz/stormy-easter-weekend-and-the-james-webb-telescope-for-indoor-astronomy/

With Easter weekend upon us we have had quite of bit of interest from people who were planning to come to Rotorua this weekend. Unfortunately, Cyclone Tam has also decided to arrive as a subtropical storm. This weekend putting a dampener on outdoor activities if not travel with the hazards associate...

14/04/2025

https://hamuranaskies.co.nz/earlier-guided-tours-for-autumn-and-winter/

With the conclusion of daylight savings as well as the sun setting earlier, and of course with the weather permitting we can now run our guided astronomical tours at the earlier time of 8:00pm We usually run the tours for about 90minutes and run two computer-controlled telescopes. We limit the size....

11/04/2025

Maintenance on a couple of telescopes. Our 200mm classic cassergrain and a 60mm refractor that we have passed on to a friend.

26/03/2025

A photograph of the Moon over Hamurana that we took with a Lumix camera mounted on one of our telescopes.

22/03/2025

We had a great group and great astronomy at Hamurana Skies last night. The milky way is really starting to show nicely. Seeing conditions were good enough last night to get on to the Fornax galactic cluster which is between 55 and 65 million light years away. Conditions ae looking cloudy for the next few days. We hope to open again later in the week.

11/03/2025

Sounds good to us too.

Akaroa Stargazing owner Luca Devescovi wants to turn down the lights on Banks Peninsula - but he needs public backing.