Last weekend Otago Museum director Ian Griffin was aboard Nasa’s SOFIA, a Boeing 747 modified to be a portable flying observatory.
Instead, Mr Griffin was focused on the aurora australis, known as the southern lights.
Mr Griffin said he first noticed that SOFIA flew through the southern auroral oval in 2016 and had been working to get a high resolution camera on board since then.
The majority of aurora photos were taken from the ground, and there were many potential observations that could made from an airborne perspective.
Those years had finally paid off, as the first photos from the project were taken this weekend.
He said he was amazed Nasa had let a "little museum at the edge of the earth" run a side project out of its mobile observatory.
"We’re literally peeking out the window."
The project was originally meant to take place in 2019, but Covid-19 halted SOFIA’s flights to the south.
The photos were taken by two cameras mounted to the plane.
Nasa had extremely high engineering standards and would not allow any liabilities on board, so the museum worked with a Dunedin engineering firm on a custom camera mount.
The cameras could take photos every five to 10 seconds.
The imagery and data discovered by the project would be used in a show about the southern lights at the museum’s planetarium, which had been in the works for years and would hopefully be ready next year.
There were a few more flights planned and he hoped to capture some more imagery before the project was wrapped up for good.
