Steven Cooke, Aurora Australis star spiral (LANDSCAPE 2026)

Here I captured a star spiral and an Aurora Australis at Mt Cook Aoraki. I had unknowingly seen some red glow on the horizon of the hillside while setting the timelapse up and thought it was the lights from Mt Cook Village (I was at the Tasman lookout carpark). So during the 5 hr timelapse at -6 degrees I captured not only the star spiral but also the aurora combined. Of course there are single captures of the aurora by itself but I feel the combined timelapse star spiral makes this shot a little special.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.