“My camera could pick it up before you could see it by eye,” he said.
Matariki, the Māori name for the Pleiades star cluster, rises in mid-winter and heralds the Māori new year.
The stars can be seen most of the year, but disappear at the beginning of chilly season.
Their reappearance in the pre-dawn sky in the middle of winter represents the beginning of a new year.
Because of the west location of Taranaki, and the stars rising in the east, it’s often harder to see Matariki, with many local iwi instead looking to the brightest star in the Orion constellation, Puanga.