New Zealand Star Search
Copyright: Tunç Tezel
I want to submit these two pictures that I took during a road trip in North Island of New Zealand. I had submitted a
single picture from that trip before, taken from Lake Taupo early in the evening of 3rd July. Later in the same evening, some lower clouds started to pass in addition to the higher thin clouds. There were also Large and Small Magellanic Clouds in the south, but I had no problems with them of course.
After Lake Taupo, I went to Tongariro National Park, the oldest protected area in New Zealand and also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I drove further south by the coastal road by the lake, then I turned right for a narrower road quickly climbing higher and passing a ridge. After the ridge, there was a slight descent and then a scenic point.
[attachment=0]TongariroRotoaira.jpg[/attachment][/i]
TongariroRotoaira: From this point, there is a really beautiful view of a smaller lake, Rotoaira. It was also much darker with absolutely no lights around. The sky got much clearer. So I took a bunch of pictures again, 5 of them to make an all-sky composite (which I hope to finish processing and submit as well). And then 6 pictures in the form a 3x2 matrix, to make this final image. Visible across the lake are snowcapped volcanoes of Ngauruhoe (2287 m) and Tongariro (1967 m).
Then I drove further south, nearer the peaks and National Park village. But there were longer episodes of passing clouds after midnight. I stopped here and there, to take a few more pictures. A last quarter Moon also rose after midnight, helping me find holes in the clouds. After refueling in Taumaurunui some 30 km north of National Park village, I turned east to route 41, which would take me back to southern coast of Lake Taupo.
[attachment=1]TongariroSouthPan.jpg[/attachment][/i]
TongariroSouthPan: As I drove east, route 41 ascended and I found a good vantage point seeing all three volcanoes of Tongariro NP in the south. This is a wide look of that scenery. Even higher Ruahepu (2797 m) is seen to the right of Tongariro and Ngauruhoe. The strange looking trees and tree ferns of New Zealand can be seen more easily with moonlight. The Milky Way is making a back flip in the west and southwest, the bright bunch of Crux-Hadar-Rigil Kent (Beta-Alpha Cen) stands in an even stranger fashion.
Never in my life have I seen Crux just until a day before. And only once before I had seen all of Centaurus, low over Hawaiian horizon. Here, they do not set. It was a very interesting entertaining night for me.
~ Tunç Tezel