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Description
On the way back from a day out in Akaroa with my girlfriend last weekend, we saw that the stars were out in full force so decided to pull over and have a go at getting a few images of them using the new camera. I shot facing due South (as that's where the best bit of the Milky Way was, plus it was facing away from Christchurch so light pollution was far less of an issue). So I took the 30s exposure, and having a look at the camera screen afterwards realised there was this amazing yellow and red glow on the horizon!

Looking at it with my own eyes, I couldn't actually tell these colours were there because it was so faint and dark - I figured it was just some light pollution from a city further South. It was only with the increased light sensitivity from the camera that these colours really showed up. How wrong was I??

Along with the Milky Way and aurora, there are a few other things here I really love: the rain falling under the storm clouds at the horizon, the reflection of the aurora among the foreground reeds, and finally, visible middle left is the Large Magellanic Cloud (this and the Small Magellanic Cloud, just out of picture to the left, are the two galaxies closest to our own).

Unfortunately I had to crank the ISO waaaay up on this shot which resulted in a hideously noisy image, but happily still good enough to show on the web in low res! Woo!

Any comments/critiques are welcome.

Description
On the way back from a day out in Akaroa with my girlfriend last weekend, we saw that the stars were out in full force so decided to pull over and have a go at getting a few images of them using the new camera. I shot facing due South (as that's where the best bit of the Milky Way was, plus it was facing away from Christchurch so light pollution was far less of an issue). So I took the 30s exposure, and having a look at the camera screen afterwards realised there was this amazing yellow and red glow on the horizon!

Looking at it with my own eyes, I couldn't actually tell these colours were there because it was so faint and dark - I figured it was just some light pollution from a city further South. It was only with the increased light sensitivity from the camera that these colours really showed up. How wrong was I??

Along with the Milky Way and aurora, there are a few other things here I really love: the rain falling under the storm clouds at the horizon, the reflection of the aurora among the foreground reeds, and finally, visible middle left is the Large Magellanic Cloud (this and the Small Magellanic Cloud, just out of picture to the left, are the two galaxies closest to our own).

Unfortunately I had to crank the ISO waaaay up on this shot which resulted in a hideously noisy image, but happily still good enough to show on the web in low res! Woo!

Any comments/critiques are welcome.