Aurora over New Zealand

Sometimes the more you look at an image, the more you see. Such may be the case for&nbsp;this beautiful nighttime panorama&nbsp;taken last week in&nbsp;New Zealand. Visible right off, on the far left, are common clouds, slightly altered by the digital fusion of combining 11 separate 20-second exposures. More striking, perhaps, is the broad&nbsp;pink aurora&nbsp;that dominates the right part of the image, a less common auroral color that is likely tinted by excited&nbsp;oxygen&nbsp;atoms high in Earth&amp;#8217;s atmosphere. Keep looking and you might notice a bright light just beyond the mountain on the left. That is the&nbsp;rising Moon &amp;#8212; and an even closer look will reveal faint&nbsp;crepuscular rays emanating from it. Musing over the image center may cause you to notice the&nbsp;central band&nbsp;of the&nbsp;Milky Way Galaxy&nbsp;which here appears to divide, almost vertically, the left clouds from the right aurora. Inspecting the upper right of the image reveals a fuzzy patch, high in the sky, that is the&nbsp;Small Magellanic Cloud. Numerous stars discretely populate the distant background. Bac