[chriselles]

I took the family to the Mount John Observatory near Lake Tekapo here in New Zealand thru the Dark Skies Project.

It was quite impressive.

As was the considerable efforts the town of Tekapo has gone to in order to limit light pollution with all external public lighting.

Just south of that location is an NZDF training area where one night I was able to observe an object burn across the night sky thru a night vision monocular and a thermal sighting system during an overnight training activity.

The seemingly substantial size and slow speed of the object going across the horizon from east to west was really unsettling, but there was nothing in the news the next day.

Several years later at an Act in Space Hackathon an attendee helped me determine that it was likely a booster stage breaking up from a Vandenberg Air Force Base launch.