Last year, by chance, Leonie and I caught the Aurora when we went to Rakiura. It was fantastic and a very special birthday present.
I never expected to see it on Waiheke tho.
But thanks to some recent massive sunspot activity, we did - along with, if social media is to be believed, pretty much everyone else in New Zealand and most of the planet.
I'll leave the high quality shots up to Leonie - I'm still on my iPhone 12 mini which is not brilliant for night photography (it's great otherwise).
I found this diagram quite good for explaining what we were seeing. Thanks Canadian Space Agency (which I had no idea existed and now I'm thinking "Cannuuuuuukkkks in Spaaaaaaaaace")
But the storm was so huge - Kp8, touching Kp9, that we could even see it clearly, with the eye, in Auckland.
All of these shots are 3-5 seconds on an iPhone 12 mini mounted on a tripod. No processing. Sadly, the sensor is so small that as soon as you zoom a little, it's watercolour time.
I'm not sure if those rays going up are STEVE or not, but either way, it was amazing to watch, 10 min drive from home.
