Colorful Aurora over New Zealand

Colorful Aurora over New Zealand

Image Credit & Copyright:
Tristian McDonald

Explanation:
Sometimes the night sky is full of surprises.

Take the sky over
Lindis Pass,
South Island,
New Zealand
one-night last week.

Instead of a typically
calm night sky filled with constant
stars,
a busy and dynamic night sky appeared.

Suddenly visible were pervasive
red aurora, green
picket-fence aurora, a
red SAR arc, a
STEVE, a
meteor, and the
Moon.

These outshone the center of our
Milky Way Galaxy and both of its two satellite galaxies: the
LMC and
SMC.

All of these were captured together on
28 exposures in five minutes,
from which this panorama was composed.

Auroras
lit up many skies last week, as a
Coronal Mass Ejection from the Sun
unleashed a burst of particles toward our Earth
that created colorful skies over
latitudes
usually too far from the Earth’s poles to see them.

More generally, night skies this month have other surprises,
showing not only auroras — but
comets.