Take Five: When you look at the Matariki star cluster, what are you seeing?

Sunday, 19 June 2022

Te Wharekura o Arowhenua tumuaki tuarua (deputy principal) Tiahuia Kawe-Small shows us how to find the Matariki cluster in the southern sky. (Video first published June 16, 2022)

The new awareness among non-Māori of the Matariki mid-winter celebrations is also a reminder of how strongly people of the past related to the natural world.

In these days when atomic clocks keep time with an accuracy of about a second every 100 million years, most of the recurring patterns in the night sky are unknown to many of us.

Matariki is a chance to correct that in a small way, even if our modern understanding of what we’re looking at is markedly different to the concepts our distant predecessors had when they looked to the stars.

* Celebrating Matariki is a 'slow rebuild of something beautiful'

* 'We can begin to plant kūmara': Witi Ihimaera on his favourite Matariki metaphor

What is the Matariki cluster?

Matariki is more than a holiday, it’s a chance to learn about matauranga Māori; it’s a springboard for discussing who we are as a nation and what we value.

Known widely as the Pleiades, Seven Sisters, Subaru, or even Messier 45 – after a list compiled by 18th century French astronomer Charles Messier – the few visible stars are among about 1000 in the cluster, loosely bound by gravity, according to Nasa.

Space.com said stars in the group – about 410 light years away – were all born about the same time from a gigantic cloud of gas and dust. The brightest stars that glowed a hot blue formed within the past 100 million years, and had lifespans of only a few hundred million years.

With sharp eyes and a clear, dark sky, it was possible to spot up to 12 of the stars in the group unaided.

Māori astronomy expert Dr Rangi Mātāmua talks of nine stars of Matariki that are significant as part of marking the Māori New Year.

When is Matariki visible from New Zealand?

Astronomer and Otago Museum director Dr Ian Griffin said he had seen Matariki and photographed it early Saturday. “It was relatively easy to see.”

It was a cold, clear night, and dark until about 7.30am. Matariki started to be visible about 6.30am. By Friday it would be rising about half an hour earlier.

Stardome astronomy educator Olive Karena-Lockyer said the star cluster Matariki was visible for 11 months of the year.

When it first reappeared it could be seen for only a short time in the northeast, just before the Sun rose.

People could see the main Matariki stars unaided, although the level of light pollution was a factor in how much they saw, Karena-Lockyer said.

“It’s something people can go and look at without any technology… But if you did want a bit of technology, binoculars would be the way to go.”

John Drummond, of Gisborne Astro Tours, said Matariki rose four minutes earlier every night. By February the cluster was rising in the evening sky, and was in the night sky for many hours.

What does the reappearance of Matariki herald?

Karanga, karakia, waiata and whaikōrero were part of a dawn ceremony at Hamilton gardens last Friday to mark the beginning of Matariki.

Matariki was one of the markers that indicated it was around the time of the shortest day, Mātāmua said.

“While it’s not the actual shortest day. It’s a marker that we are in mid-winter, from here on out the days will start to get longer.”

The reappearance of the cluster was not sufficient on its own to confirm the dates for the Matariki celebrations. The Moon also had to be in the right phase.

That was when the Moon was in its Tangaroa period, based on the Maramataka, the Māori lunar calendar.

Tangaroa coincided with the last quarter Moon, with the first day of Tangaroa in 2022 being Tuesday or Wednesday, Mātāmua said.

What about variations on how Māori marked mid-winter?

An image from Stardome Observatory on what the sky will look like on June 24.

Matamua was chair of the advisory group set up the Government to decide the dates of the Matariki public holiday.

“We had to at least come up with an approach that could be put into the Gregorian calendar,” he said.

“The similarities are many – the rising of a star or group of stars in a particular lunar phase. We found a reference to the Tangaroa lunar period from the Far North, into Bay of Plenty, into East Coast and Tūhoe.”

In its report, the committee said there were tribal and regional differences in determining when the Māori New Year was observed.

“For some iwi the pre-dawn rising of Matariki, in the correct lunar phase of the correct lunar month, heralds the Māori New Year,” the report said.

“For other tribes, Matariki is replaced by Puanga (Rigel) as the major marker of the New Year, while some look to Atutahi (Canopus). There are even regions where the setting of Rehua (Antares) in the winter is used to identify the correct period of time.”

Anything to look out for if you’re trying to see Matariki?

A treat this year is a line-up of planets. The alignment of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn has been visible since earlier in June, and on Tuesday the Moon will join in.

The Matariki constellation will be just below Venus, which will be the brightest planet in the sky.

'Most people who are getting up to catch the Matariki stars will be able to spot this beautiful alignment of six objects, including the Moon,” Stardome’s Josh Aoraki said.