Look harder

I went through the star photos from my one night shoot in New Zealand, and found this. Note the faint curtain effect in the aurora. I was looking through the many star shots and it turns out there's only a couple shots where the curtains show up, in the middle of a long sequence of shots. Add in some reflections on a temporary calm sea, and I'm loving it. My eyes saw nothing of the aurora.

Looking through star photos on a laptop with a filthy screen is really hard. Even on a desktop it takes longer since the computer has to work harder building the fine details of the image, and in star shots, it's all fine details. This was shot from the same place as the others, about the middle of the beach on Corlac Bay, looking a little south of east. Shot with a Sigma 14mm lens at f1.8, exposures are about 13 seconds at ISO 1600.

1.

 Compare that to this one. Close, but not quite the same. This is the reworked version of the original galaxy and aurora over Invercargill. The white light at the bottom right is Corlac Bay.

2.

Or this one. A narrow panorama to combine several images and try a different editing process.

3.

A slightly different angle, looking a bit more west of south, giving a better look at Corlac Bay and the reflections. The Milky Way is just to the left of this photo.

4.

 Or this one. A  different angle, looking north and up. Just below the bottom of this photo is a hill, and there was someone driving a car up a set of hairpin turns. I suppose I should try a time lapse movie of it to see how it looks. Maybe later today.

5.

Driftwood of the Day
The Milky Way is a giant arch overhead, if you're in a place dark enough to see it. Here's a smaller arch.