05/06/2025
19:18 NZST 01 June 2025
Port Hills, Christchurch
I, like many others, was delightfully surprised on Sunday evening to receive a bunch of alerts indicating the early arrival of a full halo CME at Earth. Blasted directly towards us, at blistering speeds, this CME was associated with an M8.2-class flare of Active Region 4100 that lasted over 3 hours. The average CME will cover the Sun-Earth distance in around 3 days (about the same length of time it used to take the Apollo crews to cover the Earth-Moon distance), however this particularly CME took little more than a day to arrive (just some 30 hours!)
I'd actually really been looking forward to a quiet night after a busy few days camping and exploring the coastal North Canterbury region, including three nights of clear skies and playing with astrophotography gear. Alas, with a quick glance at the incoming numbers, those plans were immediately put on hold and very kindly Richard Foot offered me a ride for a night of aurora chasing. So we set off, with our first port of call being... the Port Hills. As we arrived, there were a number of folks already out with their phones grabbing shots of the building aurora activity. By the time we left, the carpark was fit to bursting and we were quite happy to continue over the hills towards our next destination of the night.
The photograph is a 4-frame panorama shot at 40mm vertically. Merged and processed in Lightroom with relatively minimal edits. (exp +0.6, dehaze +14, shadows +75, Camera Faithful colour profile, vibrance +5, Calibration channels saturation of Red +5 & Blue +15). AI denoise applied +20.
In the scene, which was rather hazy due to sea mist blowing in from the east, we're looking over Governor's Bay in Lyttelton Harbour. You can make out the 300m length of the recently rebuilt Governors Bay jetty - a fantastic piece of work by the Governors Bay Jetty Restoration Trust - that I'd had a small part in helping to raise funds for a few years back. Leading the way at the forefront of the auroral activity is a patch of RAGDA (Red Arc with Green Diffuse Aurora) that many captured in their photos during the early part of the evening. I quite like how the clouds streaming through from the east help create a sense of depth in the photo.
EXIF: 40mm, f/1.4, 3.2s, ISO 1600.
