Trip often outshines the destination

Last Sunday evening, with my 59th birthday looming large and after weeks of unrelenting clouds, I was itching for an astronomical challenge.

Enter Comet C/2024 G3 ATLAS, a faint, tricky-to-spot, once-in-a-lifetime celestial visitor with a very limited evening window of visibility.

I invited my mate Shaun to join me on an observing expedition. Shaun is, conveniently, completely deaf in his left ear, while I’m completely deaf in my right. Between us, we make one fully functional set of ears, handy for chatting in a right-hand drive car during the hour-long trip from Portobello to a remote spot on Rocklands Rd, high on Strath Taieri.

The drive was a joy: winding roads, rolling hills, and the promise of the inky blackness of Otago’s famously pristine night skies.

My battery-powered car groaned under the weight of our arsenal of equipment. There were telescopes of various sizes, cameras galore, tripods, and enough (camera) battery packs to power a small village.

If the comet didn’t show, we figured we could open a mobile aluminium smelter or profitably export power to the North Island.

We arrived at our destination just before sunset. Strath Taieri showcased its trademark serenity: a vast, silent landscape dotted with schist outcrops and the occasional bleating sheep or mooing cow.

We set up our kit, and the wait for darkness began, punctuated by light banter about the prospects of missing the comet and waiting 500,000 years for its next appearance.

But we got lucky. The sky remained clear, and, as darkness fell, faint but unmistakable, Comet C/2024 G3 ATLAS appeared. For 20 glorious minutes, it shimmered above the horizon, a delicate smudge of cosmic beauty.

Our cameras clicked furiously, but just as we found our rhythm, the comet sank towards the wind turbines on the horizon, leaving us grinning in the dark.

As we packed the car to head home under a sky teeming with stars, I reflected on the purpose of our trip. Was it about the comet? Partly. But mostly, it was about friendship, shared laughter, and the simple joy of being under Otago’s spellbinding dark sky.

Sometimes, the best trips are the ones that seem pointless.