Verified
Great guide
Sky was disappointing; but Sang who leads it was lovely. Earnest, accomodating, engaged and a good storyteller. He had set up a lovely space with comfy camp chairs and warm blankets and hot tea/bev. It was presented in a space away from the town but not unduly difficult to get to. Will definitely contact him again when we are back in Tekapo.
Reply from Astro Tekapo
2026.05.06
Conditions for skywatching on that night were far from ideal, indeed. In this case, issuing a partial refund certainly made sense. We are glad to hear that, despite the disappointing sky situation, you got something out of your time spent in the Dark Sky Reserve. Thank you, Chris, for sharing your impressions. That is very kind of you. Hopefully, the sky gods will be in a better mood next time. We look forward to hosting you on a future occasion!
Verified
Fantastic star gazing experience
Sang was full of knowledge and answered many questions. It was a great night, absorbing, learning and seeing stars and plantes while also relaxing all rugged up with cup of hot chocolate while we talked, saw and listened. Highly recommend.
Reply from Astro Tekapo
2026.05.02
Happy to hear that you learned, watched and overall seem to have enjoyed your time! Thanks again, Jill, for participating and for very kindly taking a moment to share your feedback. Reading your review totally made our day.
Amazing experience, we were so glad we booked! Sang was awesome! Sang also sent photos of what we saw on the telescope and a photo of us the morning after. Sky was so clear even managed to get a photo of the milk way on my old phone!
Reply from Astro Tekapo
2026.04.28
Thank you, Francesca, for your visit and for this heartwarming review. Happy to hear that you got clear skies, appreciated your guided experience and photography!
Verified
A wonderful evening watching the stars
The experience was personal, instructive and very enjoyable. Sangโs knowledge of the night sky is extraordinary and he was able to bring it down to our fairly basic level. The sky was clear, the air crisp. But Sang had blankets for the cold and hot chocolate for inner warmth! Completely recommend this lovely experience for anyone staying at Tekapo.
Reply from Astro Tekapo
2026.04.23
Thank you, Gerry, for taking some time out of your South Island journey to write down and share your impressions. We're absolutely thrilled to read that you and your friends enjoyed the Astro Experience.
Our guide Sang gave us an amazing stargazing experience. In a tiny group of only four people he provided us with tuns of information about the galaxy and the billions of stars up there. Using the telescope made it even more interesting. Would highly recommend, it wonโt disappoint!
Reply from Astro Tekapo
2026.04.21
Super stoked to read that you appreciated your time in the Dark Sky Reserve with us. Thank you, Kato, for choosing Astro Tekapo and for publishing your recommendation on top of that. Have an absolutely fantastic time in Aotearoa New Zealand!
What an absolutely incredible experience. Sang was the best guide you could hope for. A must-do if youโre visiting Tekapo!
Reply from Astro Tekapo
2026.04.18
It was a pleasure sharing this epic evening with you guys. Thank you, Sean, for your many outstanding questions. And for publishing this kind recommendation. We're psyched to hear that you enjoyed your time under the starry skies of Lake Tekapo! Such a good idea to bring your photography gear, too.
My husband and I did a stargazing tour with Astro and really enjoyed it! Sang was extremely knowledgeable and shared lots of interesting stories and facts throughout the night. Loved the hot chocolate too. Thank you for this experience Sang!
Reply from Astro Tekapo
2026.04.14
We're so happy to hear that you consider your evening under the starry skies of Lake Tekapo was time well spent! A big thank you, Rica, for your visit and kind words.
Verified
First Time Seeing Nebulas and Jupiter's Rings with my own eyes โ Totally Worth It!
Sang was incredibly helpful from day one. When we were booking, he actually looked into moon phases, sunset times, and all that stuff to find the best nights for stargazing. And when we had to push our trip back a week, he was super cool about working with us on new dates. The night itself was amazing. Yeah, it was cold, but Sang had thought of everythingโcomfy chairs, blankets, and hot chocolate to keep us warm. His telescope was seriously impressive; I've never seen anything that clear. Seeing nebulas for the first time absolutely blew my mind, and then we spotted Jupiter with its rings and moons. Just incredible. What really made it special was Sang himself. He knows his stuff and loves sharing stories about Greek mythology and Mฤori culture. The kids were totally into it, and honestly, I learned heaps too. It wasn't just about pointing out starsโit was like getting a history and culture lesson all wrapped up in one. The location was perfect too. Out there with zero light pollution, it's just dark and quiet. No one else around, just us and the universe. That's honestly what you want for something like this. Pro tip: Before you go, visit an optometrist and get prescription glasses if you don't have them. I have good eyesight, but when I borrowed my wife's glasses to look up at the sky, everything became so much clearer. It made a huge difference in what I could see. Sang's a legend. If you're in Tekapo, definitely book this. Don't miss it.
Reply from Astro Tekapo
2026.04.14
It was a pleasure hosting you on a private stargazing session by the lakeside. Your early enquiry and trip planning must have helped to get you the best possible experience. The sky gods certainly approved. Thank you, Tim, for choosing Astro Tekapo, and for kindly taking some time to write this detailed review plus pro tip. We're stoked to read that you and the whole family loved everything about your evening under the stars!
Verified
Beautiful night sky!
A beautiful evening with Sang and the stars! Even got my first sighting of a fireball shooting star. I would totally recommend Astro Tepako for stargazing!
Reply from Astro Tekapo
2026.04.14
Great sighting of a spectacular fireball in the sky, indeed! Thank you, Veronica, for your visit and for your recommendation. Psyched to read that you had a beautiful experience in the Dark Sky Reserve with us.
Stargazing with Sang was super cool. The night started out cloudy, but we were able to look through the telescope and still see a lot. I really liked how he used the laser pointer to map out some of the constellations.
Only gave it 4 stars because I never saw on the website that there was a later tour(?) If I had the choice when I booked I would have preferred the later option.
Reply from Astro Tekapo
2026.04.10
Hi Robin, thank you so much for participating in the Astro Experience. And for taking some time to publish your honest feedback afterwards. We are very glad to read that, overall, you seem to have had a positive experience with us. We are also a little sad to hear that you are disappointed you didnโt get to pick your preferred time slot.
The number of tours depends on how busy it gets. If it isnโt busy, there will be only one Astro Experience available for booking. If it gets busy, a second session will be opened. And if it gets even busier, sometimes we will even add a later, third slot.
You were the very first customer to book on the date of your choice. That is why you saw only one slot available for booking online. Some guests, like you, like to make plans several days in advance. Other travellers decide for stargazing much closer to the beginning of the evening. As โlast-minuteโ bookings happen, it also can happen that slots are opened in a โlast-minuteโ way. This unfortunately is never a 100% perfectly predictable.
Hopefully, some of the reasoning behind our scheduling makes sense. Now, if it can be of any consolation to you: we truly believe that, out of the two sessions, you ended up participating in the one that got the better seeing conditions.
For readers who made it all the way down here: apart from the regular (shared) Astro Experience, we also run private tours. The Private Astro Experience never is available for booking by visitors who are not part of that party.
Thanks again, Robin, and keep looking up!
The number of tours depends on how busy it gets. If it isnโt busy, there will be only one Astro Experience available for booking. If it gets busy, a second session will be opened. And if it gets even busier, sometimes we will even add a later, third slot.
You were the very first customer to book on the date of your choice. That is why you saw only one slot available for booking online. Some guests, like you, like to make plans several days in advance. Other travellers decide for stargazing much closer to the beginning of the evening. As โlast-minuteโ bookings happen, it also can happen that slots are opened in a โlast-minuteโ way. This unfortunately is never a 100% perfectly predictable.
Hopefully, some of the reasoning behind our scheduling makes sense. Now, if it can be of any consolation to you: we truly believe that, out of the two sessions, you ended up participating in the one that got the better seeing conditions.
For readers who made it all the way down here: apart from the regular (shared) Astro Experience, we also run private tours. The Private Astro Experience never is available for booking by visitors who are not part of that party.
Thanks again, Robin, and keep looking up!
Thanks to Sang, I can never look at stars again the same.
By chance, we had a private stargazing experience with Sang on a very cold summer night. My partner and I had limited stargazing experience before, and therefore it may be difficult at times to visualize patterns in the sky (often it is said it takes a bit of imagination).
Yet, Sang very kindly set things up (including amazing telescopic equipment) to not only enable us to easily visualize the magic going on in the stars but appreciate their beauty further by explaining the stories and lore behind their origin. Thanks to this, we were able to take stargazing to another level even when we were on our own for other segments of the trip.
Sangโs passion was contagious, and will highly recommend Sang to our friends visiting Tekapo.
Reply from Astro Tekapo
2026.04.08
So happy to hear that you learned about constellations, appreciated the storytelling, as well as the telescopic sights. You were willing to get 'infected' and reach another level up in your stargazing journey. That's awesome! Thank you, Benjamin, for exploring the night sky with us, and for publishing this detailed review. We look forward to welcoming your friends under the stars of Lake Tekapo.
์ ๋ง ์์ฒญ๋ ๊ฒฝํ์ด์์ต๋๋ค.
์ ํฌ์ ๊ฐ์ด๋์๋ Sang์ ๋๋ฌด๋๋ ์น์ ํ๊ณ ์ ๋ฌธ์ ์ด์์ต๋๋ค.
์์๋ฃ๊ธฐ ์ฝ๊ฒ ์ข์ ๋์
๊ณผ ์ด๋ ต์ง ์์ ๋จ์ด๋ก ์ธ์ด์ ๋ฌธ์ ๋ ํฌ๊ฒ ์์์ต๋๋ค.
๊ทธ๊ฐ ์ค๋นํด์ค ํซ์ด์ฝ์ ๋ด์๋ ๋ฐ๋ปํ์ต๋๋ค.
๋ํํ ์์ดํ๋ ๋๋ฌด ํ๋ณตํดํ๊ณ ์ต๊ณ ์ ๊ฒฝํ์ด๋ผ๊ณ ํ์ต๋๋ค.
ํ
์นดํฌ์ ๋ฐฉ๋ฌธํ๋ค๋ฉด ๊ฐ๋ ฅ ์ถ์ฒํฉ๋๋ค
Reply from Astro Tekapo
2026.04.06
It was a pleasure hosting both of you under the stars, by the lakeside. Thank you, ์์ฐ์ง, for participating in the Astro Experience and for taking a moment to share your feedback and recommendation. If you were happy, then so are we!
Verified
Amazing Stargazing!
Fantastic experience with Astro Tekapo. It was only us and one other couple. We got great information and saw the Southern Lights, the Milky Way and other amazing sights through the telescopes. We got some great pictures via email the next morning as well. I highly recommend this experience in Lake Tekapo.
Reply from Astro Tekapo
2026.04.03
We're absolutely thrilled to hear that you had an amazing time with the Aurora and us in the Dark Sky Reserve! Thank you, Paul, for choosing Astro Tekapo as your stargazing experience provider. And for kindly taking a moment to write down your impressions.
Sang is a great tour guide with plenty of knowledge and care for his guests. We had a great time, would recommend.
Reply from Astro Tekapo
2026.04.01
Thank you, Ashley, for your participation in and recommendation of the Astro Experience. Stoked to read that you had a good time under the stars! โจ๐๐
Verified
Great personalised stargazing
We had a great time stargazing with Sang. His knowledge of the stars and care for his guests is exceptional. Would recommend. Thanks Sang!
Reply from Astro Tekapo
2026.04.01
It was a pleasure sharing a night of stargazing with you and your family. Very happy to hear that you enjoyed your time by the lakeside! Thank you, Ashley, for your recommendation.