Intoxicating

Nothing gets my pulse racing more than spotting aurora on the horizon. I get all edgy, nervous , you never know how long it will last, where it will be, what it will look like in a few brief minutes. I'd just concluded my astro workshop, Dark Skies of Wonder, with a great crew of people, at Tekapo's famous church when we spotted a bright arc in the sky. Firing off a few frames we could tell it was Aurora, but un-typical for NZ it was a very defined green. So we all headed off, and it seems all headed off to chase the light. I drove another half hour south to a point on the main route that I knew well and had always planned to shoot. An ideal opportunity! Shooting at 4am I was a little tired and still had a fair drive home, so this was my last panoramic. Put together from 40 individual frames at 24mm, the Milky Way stretched directly overhead so it made shooting somewhat tricky. The resultant image is vast with so much detail and clarity, by far the best astro image I have shot with the a7r. via RobDickinson http://500px.com/photo/102529453