Canterbury astronomers restoring and preserving the night sky

For the past several months, Stuff's Iain McGregor has spent time with a group of Canterbury astronomers who helped him capture stunning pictures of the night sky you can see below. But they’re a little fed up.

(All the pictures taken in this story are not stacked astrophotography pictures, they are single frame images using a telescope as a lens.)

The group's aim is simple: band together to protect, restore and preserve the night sky from light pollution.

Raul Elias-Drago, who volunteers and helps run the Oxford Area School Observatory in North Canterbury, said that light pollution in the sky from every normal day things like street lamps affects the human circadian rhythm and wildlife ecosystems.

The Oxford Observatory has created a dark sky initiative and petitioned the International Dark Sky Association to accredit Oxford as an International Dark Sky community.

A dark sky is a protected area that restricts artificial light, like the LED street lights that can be found all around cities.

Darkness is an important part of the survival of humans and their body clock, animal ecosystems and nocturnal creatures, but it is also paramount for astronomers as they continue learning about space.

"It (the dark sky) actually brings a lot of benefits, whether it's the protection of human health and the restoration of our circadian rhythm in our health.

"Whether it's protecting the ecosystems and wildlife and making sure that birds can migrate well, and frogs have a good nighttime cycle and animals at night can pray and eat and reproduce," said Elias-Drago.

Fellow astronomer and now astrophotographer Stu Parker said that the lights from Christchurch City, Oxford and nearby rugby fields have impacted his work and created a "massive difference" to his long-exposure photography.

"It causes gradients in our pictures" he said and neglects to bring to life the pictures and sights of the sky that Parker sees and collects data on, which includes 175 supernova.

"Just a simple shade to point it downward can make all the difference. It's not hard to do those sorts of things as an initial step… that sort of thing can make a massive difference in seeing and improving light conditions over the whole sky," said Parker.

Former president of the Canterbury Astronomical Society and amateur astronomer Rob Glassey regularly attends a camp in Staveley, just north of Christchurch.

Glassey said people from all over the South Island come to the camp just to look through the telescope.

"(You can see) Things like fake nebulas and things like that all sorts of detail and wispy gas and dark dust lanes and faint stars, lots and lots of stars, you just don't see anywhere near as many stars from the city," he said.

Glassey and other members of the Canterbury Astronomical Society capture information from the dark sky which they then pass on to professional astronomers.

"We get to see all sorts of interesting information about that asteroid about you know, its shape, how big it is, and exactly its path and things like that."

Elias Drago said for Oxford to be accredited as a dark sky community would be a "great sense of pride".

"We’re hoping for increased visitor traffic… we want to have more interest in science, in the sky, in our own identity. It's really important to expose people to the benefits of the dark sky," said Elias-Drago.