A Lantern Slide by Charles Michie, part of the Whangārei Museum Collection.
A Lantern Slide by Charles Michie, part of the Whangārei Museum Collection.
Matariki season is fast becoming a favourite time of year for many, especially those who haven’t lived with or had exposure to the concept until it was recently recognised as a public holiday in 2022.
This year, Whangārei Museum is breaking their traditional Matariki mould with a new way to celebrate. No constellation in the sky has been subjected to so many myths, legends and folklore in almost every culture on the planet but first we welcome you to the dark museum space to learn about what is going on approximately 400 light years away.
Our latest exhibition “Matariki at the Museum: Trilogy One” is part of a multi-year commitment to explore the layers of Matariki across time, space and cultures, building a resource for the museum archives as we learn.
This year’s space lens of Matariki focuses on the science before the cultures. Visitors will learn what Matariki, also known as Pleiades, is and where in the chaos of the universe it can be found.
Whangārei Museum - the latest exhibition is “Matariki at the Museum: Trilogy One”.
The installation begins with a logarithmic map of the universe kindly supplied by artist Pablo Carlos Budassi from Argentina. Budassi used images by NASA and research by the University of Princeton to create an image that has blown minds around the world.
A celestial search of his map with a laser helps to discover a selection of space objects with adults and children’s difficulty levels available.
The second feature of the exhibition was supplied by undoubtedly one of the most extraordinary men of Northland- the late Charles Michie MBE.
Out of the hundreds of astronomical lantern slides that he donated to the Whangārei Museum Collection, he framed just one in red - Pleiades, like a beacon guiding its place into the exhibition.
But the main takeaway from his works shown, apart from the quality and clarity he captured in a time of manual technology, was the brilliantly varied life he lived, second to his main occupation- farming.
The Merope in Pleiades, Lantern Slide by Charles Michie.
His biography was written by historian Florence Keene not long before he passed away and details the brain surgery he survived as a child, the engineering feats he achieved as a farmer, his involvement in politics and of course his great love for astronomy.
In the gallery space we have set up a comfortable spot to watch his slides and read his expedition reports found on the NASA data system.
Finally, the origin of the blue glow within the gallery is a result of an over-sized model nebula. This Instagram-worthy light fixture was created as the result of a challenge set by our Planetarium North friends next door on Heritage Park.
In a space sense, we learn that the blue appearance of Matariki/Pleiades, is derived from the blue-hot glowing stars themselves, in combination with the nebula: An interstellar cloud of dust and gases which is reflecting the surrounding stars.
This year when we look to the eastern horizon at dawn to see the rise of Matariki, visitors to the Whangārei Museum will understand the science to accompany the other ways to celebrate the meaning of Matariki.
Join us again in 2025 to build on this journey with the Te Ao Māori lens and later in 2026 as we finish the Matariki Trilogy with the Multicultural lens.
