Aphelion
ARCHIVE — 000.01 / FURTHER ALIGNING APERTURE

A logbook of distant[01] light — listening to the dark.

[ DARK SITE 04 / 2026 ]

Independent observatory, Mt John Reserve 43°59′S — Aotearoa.

Apparatus

Radio · Optical · Archival

Next public night

New moon, 18 July 2026

Signals catalogued

— 048

Drag the sphere · scroll to descend01 / 05

We don't chase headlines. We wait for signals — slow, deliberate messages that arrive from the furthest observable dark and refuse to be explained.

§ 01b — Field model
— click & drag to orbit

A model of the
field, rendered in
mathematics.

ApproximationSigned distance fields
96 steps / pixelFragment shader only
Smooth minimumNo polygons, only math
InteractiveDrag to rotate the field

The Archive
selected catches, 2020–26

Catalogue  [048] Hover to decode
↳ click to read field notes
§ 02b — A signal, printed

A catch,
printed in text.

We render a scan of a distant body through our optical pipeline — lighting, shading, depth — then sample every pixel and remap its luminance to a single character. A signal becomes a document.

PIPELINEScan → luminance → glyphs
RESOLUTIONRoughly 120 × 70 characters
FRAMERATE60 per second, sidereal
CHARSET' .:-+*=%@#'
RX  /  Live from the dish
§ 02 — Observation method

Method
— four movements

Every signal begins with a long wait, and ends with a sealed envelope. We don't believe in news cycles; we believe in patience.

01

Wait.

We point and we wait. Hours, sometimes nights, before a single honest frame.

Movement one
02

Capture.

Raw frames, unfiltered. Timestamped, geolocated, stored in triplicate.

Movement two
03

Catalogue.

Position, magnitude, spectral class, provenance. Signed by the observer on duty.

Movement three
04

Archive.

Sealed in the public log. Anyone can read it. We take no opinions on meaning.

Movement four

Twelve thousand
photons, one path.

A field of twelve thousand photons, traced through a three-dimensional curl-noise vector field — the same mathematics that describes the atmospheric refraction we have to correct for, every night. Move your cursor to push them.

Curl(noise(p)) · GLSL vertex shader
§ 03 — Visit the observatory

Come
for the dark

visit@aphelion.observatory

Public nights

We host one open night per new moon. Twelve seats, by lottery. Request a seat →

Dark site

Station 04, Mt John Reserve
Aotearoa · 43°59′S 170°27′E
Directions, sidereal →