Aoraki Mackenzie: stargazing in New Zealand's gold-tier dark sky reserve
From my balcony in Nicosia, at 35° north, there’s a whole half of the galaxy I’ll never see. The Southern Cross never clears my horizon. The two Magellanic Clouds, the nearest galaxies bright enough to catch with the naked eye, sit permanently below it. To see them I have to get on a plane and fly south, and the most organised place on Earth to do that is a high, dry basin on New Zealand’s South Island: the Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve. ...