https://www.martincanning.com/p72772570 en-us (C) Martin Canning (Martin Canning) Tue, 13 Oct 2026 08:09:14 GMT Tue, 13 Oct 2026 08:09:18 GMT https://www.martincanning.com/img/s/v-10/p1690410473-10.jpg https://www.martincanning.com/p72772570 120 80 https://www.martincanning.com/p72772570/e64C19DE9

]]>I took this photo while on a family holiday in Queenstown in October 2026. We were staying about 20 minutes drive out of Queenstown at Jack's Point, which is actually a really great location to capture stars, and on this night the aurora. Earlier in our trip, on our first night, I had ventured out with the family to see if we could see the aurora, as the previous night while we were still in Australia there was an epic aurora! I managed to capture a faint glow of the aurora on the first night, but nothing more. The next few nights were quite cloudy, so didn't venture out. The whole time we were in New Zealand there was forecast of a good night on the last night we were there, and that is also when the cloud was planned to clear! After reading the forecasts for the aurora Kp and the clouds, it was forecast that 4am would be the best time to capture the aurora, so I had planned to go to bed and then wake up early. However, at around 10pm I noticed that there were people sharing on social media images of the aurora, so given I was only 5 minutes away from my planned location, I ventured out. There were heaps more people down at the Jack's Point Beach than there were the previous time I had ventured out! Anyway, I parked up, walked to the beach, found a location a bit away from others and set my camera up. Much to my amazement there was an epic green, pink and orange glow on my screen. I could see with my faint eye that there was a tinge of coloured night sky, so I continued to mess around with my camera settings and see what worked the best. I rested on settings I was happy with and fired off a number of frames. After 10-15 minutes though, the cloud started coming over (and you can see it just in the top of this image). This coincided with the best colour in the sky! I continued to photograph until the milky way was occluded by the clouds, and then packed up and went home...well....I did take a few more shots from the car park! I set my alarm to get up at 4am the next morning, but when I arose, I checked the aurora forecast and it was all quite, so I went back to bed!

FujiFilm XT-4
10-24mm @ 10mm
ISO6400 f/4 30sec
Capture time: 9/10/2026 10:29pm (NZ time)

]]> (Martin Canning) Night Sky Scenic Jack's Point Aurora https://www.martincanning.com/p72772570/e64C19DE9 Tue, 13 Oct 2026 08:07:49 GMT