“Fly me to the Moon” goes the song lyric but for dark sky company Spacewardbound on a cloudy day it’s virtual reality, projected onto the wall and ceiling of a portable Planetarium by powerful software.
As a group of local kids watched, the software tracked to their home near Aorangi Forest Park – then launched through the atmosphere to land on the Lunar surface.
Close-ups of craters and other landscape objects followed as the Moon’s surface was explored. Then came fresh childhood instructions: to Mars, to Matariki, to Neptune, the Sun, even chemical cloud-enshrouded Venus. Then it’s off to other star clusters, and dense Magellanic clouds, across the Milky Way. All under the control of director and astronomy guide Sam Leske and co-director Haritina Mogosanu and their company, Milky-Way Kiwi.
The Star: how do the kids respond?
“Kids get it, they get a lot more than people give them credit for,” Leske said. So while some think dumbing down science education is critical, “people are pretty smart. They handle pretty complex things in their everyday lives. Scientific concepts about space are not really that hard.
“You can have a conversation about gravity with a six or seven-year-old and they get it, they understand it…. They’re on to it, and far more than people give them credit for.”
Part of the pair’s remit is taking space and science to the school system.
“We have been to around 200 schools throughout New Zealand, we don’t mind where it is … as we see this (STEM education – science, technology, engineering, maths) as really important, and a lot of the science work centres on the main centres.
“We’ve had about 40,000 people through our Planetarium and space science programme… mostly kids.
“So the two most important projects (we run) are Star Safari and the school Spacewardbound stuff. They are both a way of bringing outreach and STEM access to the public.
“Star Safari does that by looking through telescopes, looking at the night sky, looking through the Observatory and Spacewardbound does it by bringing it to the school _ bringing them something they can’t do themselves,” Leske added.
“We also do professional development for teachers as well … as teaching space can be a little daunting if it’s not in their background. So we … demystify it a bit and give them a bit of confidence in covering this stuff.”
What drives their work?
“We want to give people an experience they can’t get anywhere else, give them a real science-based experience that’s educational, enjoyable and they walk away knowing something different.”
“At the heart of it is this whole knowledge tourism philosophy. We’re getting people who tell us they choose us because they’re going to learn something, their kids are going to learn something. It’s something that’s gelled really well with our customer base, and which we enjoy,” he said.
It’s not just “moving a telescope round … but (also) talking about what amazing sights we have here, about the importance of the dark sky reserve, the ecological importance, the health aspects _ even the financial aspects of the dark sky reserve.”
Weaving those things together provides “what we’ve created, this knowledge tourism experience, which is a lot of fun,” Leske noted.
The pair’s motivation is “to get kids into STEM studies, because that’s where the productivity comes from for the country.”
In turn, their customers, the bulk of whom are local, confirm that about 40 percent attend as a result of “word of mouth” reference by friends and contacts.
The Milky-Way Kiwi business has two units: Star Safari and Spacewardbound. Star Safari is the observatory/tourism/stargazing business, Spacewardbound for space science education.
Dark sky reserve status across the district meant that over the past four years there had been no increase in light scatter.
“Our vision for Wairarapa is this is the place you come if you want to do stargazing. We have a dark sky reserve … which one day may extend all the way to Napier.”
Contacts: milky-way.kiwi
