Date: June 13, 2010

Title: Matariki Rising

Podcaster: Ron Fisher

Description: Matariki is the Maori word for The Pleiades star cluster, and is very important for the Maori people from New Zealand. They use the Matariki for navigating by the stars across vast oceans and but mostly for their Maramataka; which is the lunar calendar they use for harvesting and planting. The rising of Matariki happens around late May early June.

Link: www.cosmodome.co.nz

Bio: Ron Fisher is an amateur astronomer from New Zealand with a true passion for the stars. Ron studied astrophysics at Canterbury University and then moved to Wellington to work as Visitor Experience Coordinator for the Carter Observatory. Since then Ron developed his own teaching service utilising the Cosmodome Portable Planetarium which he makes available to schools and organisations around NZ. In 2008 Ron founded the Levin Stargazers astronomy club which won an international award for its outreach efforts during 2009, the international year of astronomy. Ron is the immediate past president of the Foxton Beach Astronomical society and current director of the education section of the Royal Astronomical Society of NZ.”

Today’s sponsor: Between the Hayabusa homecoming from Itokawa and the Rosetta flyby of asteroid Lutetia, 13 June until 10 July 2010, this episode of 365 Days of Astronomy is sponsored anonymously and dedicated to the memory of Annie Cameron, designer of the Tryphena Sun Wheel, Great Barrier Island, New Zealand, a project that remains to be started.”

Additional sponsorship for this episode of 365 Days of Astronomy has been provided by Kylie Sturgess and the Token Skeptic podcast, a weekly show about superstition, science and why we believe – at www.tokenskeptic.org.

Transcript:

Ron Fisher: This is a talk about Matariki. What is Matariki? If you’re from the northern hemisphere this probably sounds like a very strange word to you. I’m from New Zealand, born and raised, and the indigenous people of New Zealand are the Maori people who came from Polynesia some millenia ago. They brought this word and this culture to New Zealand. Matariki is the Maori word for The Pleiades star cluster and as you know the Pleiades is world famous and it’s called Subaru in Japan, the Seven Sisters in ancient Greece and they had their own stories about the seven sisters. Well, for the Maori people, Matariki is very important. In fact, it’s been important for their survival for a long time. Not only for navigating by the stars across vast oceans but mostly for their Maramataka; which is the lunar calendar the Maori people have used especially for harvesting and planting. So Matariki happens around late May early June. What we’re talking about is the rising of Matariki – the heliacal rising or the dawn rising – because that’s what starts the Maori new year. So we look for the rising of Matariki and the following New Moon or, in some cases, the full Moon is what starts the Maori new year. It comes back in line with the stars even though we follow a lunar calendar.

I’m going to touch on some of the cultural aspects of Matariki for those that are interested but we’re also going to talk about how to observe Matariki in the sky and why it’s so important and we’ll touch on Galactic star clusters and why they’re so important to astronomers.

If you’re looking at the stars in the morning sky and you’re looking towards the eastern horizon before sunrise you’re going to observe stars in their heliacal rising. What we’re talking about here is that as the Earth goes around the Sun during the year, the Sun appears to shift with respect to the stars so it moves through the 12, or 13, signs of the zodiac. What we get is that the sun appears to go through Taurus the Bull and then on to Gemini the Twins. As that happens it means that the stars of Taurus begin to become visible before sunrise. Matariki (The Pleiades) actually sits on the back of Taurus the Bull. Everyday the stars appear to rise 4 minutes earlier and they rise higher and higher in the sky. That is what we call the heliacal rising. Matariki disappears around May but it reappears towards late May, early June.

Now if you imagine you take yourself back some 200 years the Tohunga – the really wise, knowledgable people of the tribe – they would have been studying the stars intently night by night looking for signs and omens about things to come. After millenia of knowledge being passed down – the traditions – they were very, very knowledgable and they knew what to look for. In fact, before Matariki rises there is another star called Rigel, or Puanga, that rises before so it’s another sign to say that Matariki is on its way so they’ll be particularly looking out for it. In fact in some tribes Puanga is what starts the Maori new year instead of Matariki. That would simply be because of geography because there would be mountains in the way and Puanga rises at the same time for them as Matariki rises for others.

So what are we observing? Well some people call it the Seven Sisters because they can see seven or so stars there. So it’s a little star cluster, kind of hazy, but rather large. In fact it’s rather larger than a full Moon in diameter. Depending on what the weather is like at the time, you may see seven stars, you may see less, or even more. Some people say that that is actually a prediction of the weather to come and in particular the harvest that’s going to happen. So that’s very important to know what you’re harvest is going to be like to be able to predict the weather because that’s going to determine your celebrations as well. So Matariki is a time of reflection; we look at the year that’s been, we remember the people that have passed away, we also contemplate the year to come and we celebrate that. If Matariki is not so clear in the morning sky they’ll say that that is a prediction that the winter is going to be a harsh one and the harvest season’s not going to be so great. Then we would be careful with the food that we ate during the winter. If it’s crystal clear we’ll say “great, it’s going to be a great harvest” and we’ll really celebrate.

I want to talk now a little bit more about the scientific aspects of these, what we call, Galactic star clusters or open star clusters as The Pleiades is, because they’re really important to astronomers. As astronomers we learn a lot about these objects because they tell us a lot about the evolution of stars; how stars evolve. That’s because Galactic star clusters, or open star clusters as we call them, are very young in age. I’m talking a 100 million years old but for stars that is very young. Compare that to our Sun which is approximately 4.5 billion (4500 million) years old so our Sun is actually quite highly evolved compared to the stars of the Pleiades. So we say they are very young and I liken it to being brothers and sisters because they’re born from the same nebula – the same cloud of gas. Just like we’re born in the same family, we live together and eventually though we do find our own homes. So the stars of Matariki are close together but slowly they are drifting apart and they will eventually find their own homes. They’re also very hot stars and people find that hard to imagine because they look very blue and they say “but doesn’t that mean they’re cool?” That’s what we relate to things on Earth but, you know, as you get beyond red hot things go white hot but we don’t often get beyond that on the Earth here. If you get beyond white hot things actually go blue. So we’re talking about the surface of these stars as some 40,000 degrees Kelvin. The centre of the stars are much hotter than that but it’s the surface which gives us its temperature. So very young, very hot, blue stars.

It’s really interesting because now we can observe the spectrum of the stars and its the light from stars which really gives astronomers all the information. It is like a fingerprint inside of a star. We observe the spectrum of these stars in a cluster and we now know what young stars look like.

I’m going to move on now, just to finish up, I’m going to show you how to observe Matariki in the sky. If you get out in the morning sky and you look due east. We’ll imagine its the 14th of June which is the day of the new Moon in 2010. You want to get up by about 5.30 am. You want to make sure there are no clouds in the sky firstly and that you’ve got a clear horizon to the east. It might mean going up a hill or going to a beach where you’ve got an ocean horizon if you can but you need to be able to see towards the east before the Sun rises. I say 5.30 because you want to get prepared, you want to make sure you’re warm and you’ll also want to let your eyes adjust. If you really want to watch the star cluster rising then it’s good to be prepared for that. It’s say 6 o clock now and you’ll be able to see Puanga (Rigel) rising up due East first and foremost; that bright white-ish with maybe a slight yellow tint to it. Below that as time progresses is Tautoru – that’s those three stars of Orion’s Belt. Those are one, two, three in a row, very close together, very distinctive. They actually point you to the left and to the right. To the right (left for those in the northern hemisphere) you’ll find Takurua (Sirius) and to the left (right for those in the northern hemisphere) you’ll find Aldebaran and Matariki. So use those three stars if you can find them to point you across past Aldebaran, the eye of Taurus the Bull – a kind of red star – and beyond that is Matariki.

Matariki is quite a faint star cluster especially on the horizon like this. Sometimes you have to use your averted vision so if you look to the side of it it draws you back in because your peripheral vision is actually more sensitive and can pick up more detail than if you look at something straight on. That would be another reason why people would’ve seen Matariki as quite an auspicious star cluster because it draws your attention back to it.

OK, so that’s how to observe Matariki. So just to recap, get up by 5.30 if you can, but really you want to be watching at 6.30 because the Sun’s going to come up by about 6.45 and then it’s just going to disappear into the Sun’s rays. Look for Puanga, Tautoru and off to the left (right for those in the northern hemisphere) you’ll find Matariki. And that concludes our short discussion about Matariki and the Maori new year. I hope you’ve enjoyed that and I hope you can get out in the morning sky for yourself and see it as it has been for thousands of years.

Stuart Lowe: That was Ron Fisher from the Cosmodome podcast. To hear more from Ron visit www.cosmodome.co.nz

End of podcast:

365 Days of Astronomy
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