Welcome
The New Zealand International Starlight conference will take place at Lake Tekapo, New Zealand in June 2012.
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The Starlight Conference will be opened on Sunday June 10 by Sir Tumu Te Heuheu, Paramount Chief of Ngati Tuwharetoa in the North Island. Sir Tumu is a former chair of the World Heritage Committee and has been prominent in conservation issues in New Zealand. We are honoured that he will be with us on this important occasion.
NEW: There will be two events at the Starlight Conference open to the public.
4 pm Tuesday 12 June at the Godley Hotel. A screening of the much acclaimed documentary ‘The City Dark’ by Ian Cheney, Wicked Delicate Films, New York.
4 pm Wednesday June 13 at the Godley Hotel. A Public Forum at which a panel of six international experts will answer questions from the public on Dark-Sky Reserves.
Free tickets for these events are available from Earth and Sky Ltd and from Tekapo Tourist Information.
This conference is recognized by the Starlight Initiative as the third of a series started in 2007 on the island of La Palma with the World Conference in Defence of the Night Sky and the Right to Observe the Stars, where the Starlight Declaration was adopted. It will address themes concerning
- the defence of the quality of the night sky,
- the right to observe the stars, the heritage of starlight,
- the issues of light pollution, the protection of observatory sites,
- the benefits of public outreach in astronomy and
- the cultural aspects of visual astronomy.
The Starlight Conference in New Zealand has been planned in conjunction with a bid we recently submitted to the International Dark-Sky Association for a Dark-Sky Reserve to be recognized in the Mackenzie Basin region around Lake Tekapo, and also in the nearby Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park. A Starlight Reserve for the Mackenzie Basin was also proposed in the recent IAU-ICOMOS Thematic Study. We will discuss the concept, implementation and benefits of Starlight Reserves as a means of protecting the night sky, with the benefits for public outreach and astro-tourism, and for astronomical research.
In addition, several radio astronomers have pointed out that the issues of radio-frequency interference have much in common with issues of light pollution. We will therefore expand the topics under discussion to RFI and the development of radio-astronomy in New Zealand, especially the selection of radio-quiet sites. This is topical as New Zealand may participate with Australia in the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio-astronomy project.
Earlier Starlight meetings were held at La Palma in April 2007 and in Fuerteventura (both in the Canary Islands) in March 2009. The New Zealand meeting will continue the progress made at these earlier meetings.
