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Our next Dark Sky Park event will be held on Saturday 26th July. Scorpius, the constellation will be rising in the East over the hill at sunset. So “Scorpius Arising” is the name for this event. Should the weather be poor we will defer to the following Saturday night, 2nd August. Please RSVP for the […]
The 7th of August meeting of Nelson Astronomical Society (NAS) will be held at the Milton Room, Cawthron Institute, Milton Street and include a talk by NAS co-chair Hamish Barker on the subject of the global meteor network. The Global meteor network (GMN) consists of a worldwide network of 1920 cameras monitoring the night sky […]
August Saturday 23rd will be our next Dark Sky Park event. Last month we celebrated Scorpius, it is followed by Sagittarius, “Sagittarius Rising” is a fitting name for the night as the constellation will be rising in the East over the hill at sunset. The tea pot shaped constellation almost hangs, by the […]
There's a line Flat Earthers use when criticising our basic understandings about our world that seems to win people to their way of thinking: "if space is a vacuum, why doesn't it suck all our atmosphere into space?" This gets people imagining the need for some sort of crystal dome to hold our atmosphere in. […]
Our next event at the Wai-iti International Dark Sky Park is Saturn Rising on the 27th September. The focus will be on planets and the moon. Mars will be setting in the west. Saturn will be rising in the north East, and the 5 day old moon will be in Scorpio. The moon may make […]
By studying World War I battlefields, Charles Gifford who was a teacher at Wellington College developed the theory that lunar craters were formed by impacts. At the conclusion of the war the favoured theory was the lunar craters were volcanic. Gifford used mathematics to explain how meteors gave rise to craters.
"The Final Club Dark Sky Park night gathering at the Wai-iti Dark Sky Park for 2025 will take place as an end of year celebration. (at 437/439 Wakefield- Kohatu highway, Wai Iti, south of Wakefield). Date is Friday 21st November 2025. Postponement night Sat 22nd if the weather is poor on Friday, or stay two […]
The Nelson Astronomical Society is hosting a film evening at the Suter Theatre on the evening of December 3rd, with two very well rated astronomical documentaries being shown: "Messengers" and "The Farthest". "Messengers" (45 minutes) A new, immersive documentary by Canadian director Jeffrey Zablotny, MESSENGERS features the South Pole neutrino experiment as part of a surreal, […]
This will be our last opportunity to organise things for our AGM
This lunar eclipse is late at night - totality will be between 0000 and 0100 - so think about joining us out at Wai-iti Dark Sky Park, staying overnight in the campsite to save heading home in the wee hours of the morning No entry fee, but consider pocketing some coins and donate to the […]
We’re thrilled to announce the 2026 Beatrice Hill Tinsley Lecturer: Associate Professor Samantha Lawler, an astronomer at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada. Her headline talk, "Astronomy vs the Billionaire Space Race", promises a lively, thought‑provoking look at how private space ventures are reshaping our skies and the future of astronomy. Can we also bring […]