From 8–10 April 2026, SpacewardBoundNZ hosted a group of New Zealand’s top secondary students in Wairarapa for the national training camp for the Astronomy and Astrophysics Olympiad. The camp followed a series of online training sessions for students seeking a place on the team that will represent New Zealand in Vietnam in October 2026.
This year’s Olympiad committee includes Yvette Perrott (Victoria University of Wellington), Bruce Ngataierua (Te Kura), Haritina Mogoşanu (SpacewardBoundNZ), Jenny Pollock (Earth and Space Science Teachers Association), Penglong Zhou (Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand), and Antony Gomez (Wellington Astronomical Society).
Yvette, Hari and Bruce led the camp, supported by Sam Leske (SpacewardBoundNZ). Students stayed at Brackenridge near Martinborough and trained at Star Safari Observatory and the Waihinga Centre.
What we did during the camp
The camp focused on observational astronomy, including telescope operation and understanding the night sky.
Day sessions were held in Hari and Sam’s portable planetarium, the Mars Blueberry, where students:
- learned to recognise stars and constellations
- explored how the sky will look in Vietnam
- practised calculating local sidereal time
- developed spatial understanding of the celestial sphere
Night sessions took place at Star Safari Observatory, where students applied these skills using telescopes under the dark skies of the Wairarapa Dark Sky Reserve.
The second day extended their knowledge and worked through past Olympiad problems. On the third day, students sat two exams used to select the final national team.
The calibre of students was outstanding, and their commitment to such a demanding programme was commendable.
What makes the Astronomy and Astrophysics Olympiad special?
The International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics is unique in combining:
- Theory (physics and mathematics)
- Data analysis (real astronomical data)
- Observational astronomy (the actual sky)
Students are not only tested on knowledge, but on their ability to reason from what they see.
In observational exams, they may:
- identify constellations in seconds
- estimate angles visually
- reconstruct coordinate systems from partial information
Unlike typical school problems, the data are often incomplete or noisy—requiring estimation and judgement, just like real science.
Some other problems are based on current or recent astronomical events, for example, comets (e.g. NEOWISE in 2020-style problems), Satellite constellations (like Starlink) and Exoplanet systems such as TRAPPIST-1. Students are sometimes solving problems based on things astronomers are actively studying.
Speed matters a lot
During observational rounds, students often have seconds to identify objects and minutes to complete a full-sky task. Top students have to recognise the sky instantly. And to top it up, some questions are deliberately “imperfect”. Unlike school exams, data may be noisy, diagrams may be incomplete, and information may be missing. The students must estimate and reason, just like real scientists. We have seen these in action during the training camp.
Performance margins can be extremely tight. A handful of marks may separate gold, silver, and bronze medals, and it is often the observational component that determines the final outcome, hence the ability to quickly interpret the sky or extract meaning from limited data can make all the difference.
For many students, participation in the Olympiad is a gateway into future scientific careers. Alumni frequently go on to study physics, astronomy, engineering, or related fields, with some eventually contributing to major international projects and institutions such as NASA or the European Space Agency.
At its heart, however, the Astronomy Olympiad is rooted in something much older than modern science. One of the classic skills tested is the ability to tell time from the stars, to look at the sky and infer not just what is visible, but when. It is a reminder that, despite all our technological advances, astronomy still begins with the simple act of looking up and asking questions.
Why this matters for teaching
Olympiad-style astronomy develops:
- pattern recognition
- estimation skills
- reasoning under uncertainty
These are core scientific skills—and highly transferable.
The sky as a clock
One of the most powerful ideas we explored is:
You can tell the time just by looking at the stars.
This relies on the relationship between:
Solar time (clock time)
Sidereal time (star time)
The patterns that the stars make look the same to our eyes the next time the Earth turns and points in the same direction, and again and again. The patterns that stars make, called asterisms, do not change during our lives, and in fact, it takes thousands of years for them to visibly do so. This is why, when someone says, for example, that the Egyptians built the pyramids in the Giza complex to mirror Orion’s Belt, we can understand what they say.
Even though we can measure stars’ proper motion with telescopes, it takes tens of thousands of years for the asterisms in the sky to change. Hence, the stars are an excellent tool for telling both direction and time, as the various shapes we notice on the celestial sphere are the same; they just temporarily disappear from our field of view as they get behind the Sun or the Earth.
The key formula
Where:
- LST (Local Sidereal Time) = the right ascension (RA) currently on the meridian
- RA☉ = the Sun’s right ascension
- 12 h = because the Sun is on the meridian at local noon
Why this works
- The Earth rotates, bringing different stars overhead
- Each star has a fixed “address” (right ascension)
- The Sun’s position changes through the year
Comparing:
- what is overhead (LST)
- with where the Sun is (RA☉)
tells you how long it has been since noon
A classroom challenge
Here’s a simplified Olympiad-style question:
If the Pleiades (Matariki) are highest in the northern sky and the Sun is in Scorpius, what time of night is it?
Answer: Around midnight in late November or early December
Because:
Sun RA ≈ 16h
Pleiades RA ≈ 4h → LST ≈ 4h
Astronomy begins with looking up—and learning how to ask questions about what we see, and in doing so, it reconnects students with one of the oldest scientific practices: using the sky to understand time, direction, and our place in the universe.
