Sunday, June 21, 2026

Aurora Australis with Nearby Galaxies & Meteor: View from New Zealand

Aurora Australis with Nearby Galaxies & Meteor: View from New Zealand




Astrophotographer Taichi Nakamura: "Nice auroras that kept coming back throughout the night. I finished up with a meteor and a drop of rain in the changable mountain weather of the national park."

Also known as the northern lights (aurora borealis) or southern lights (aurora australis), auroras are colorful, dynamic, and often visually delicate displays of an intricate dance of particles and magnetism between the Sun and Earth called space weather. When energetic particles from space collide with atoms and molecules in the atmosphere, they can cause the colorful glow that we call auroras.

Learn more about auroras: 
https://science.nasa.gov/sun/auroras/

The Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy is around 163,000 light-years from Earth. The Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy is about 200,000 light-years away.

New Zealand is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island (Te Ika-a-Māui) and the South Island (Te Waipounamu)—and over 600 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island country by area and lies east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and south of the islands of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga.


Image Credit: Taichi Nakamura 
Location: Aoraki Mount Cook National Park, South Island, New Zealand
Image Details: Canon R100 astromodified Sigma Arts 20mm ISO6400 f/1.8 8sec
Taichi's website: https://www.facebook.com/traceoflightphotography
Date: June 12, 2026 


#NASA #Space #Astronomy #Science #Sun #SolarSystem #Planets #Earth #Aurora #AuroraAustralis #SouthernLights #Meteors #LMC #SMC #Stars #Astrophotography #TaichiNakamura #Astrophotographer #AorakiMountCookNationalPark #SouthIsland #NewZealand #STEM #Education

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