I saw the light.

After an early morning (before sunrise) departure from Christchurch yesterday morning (16-06-10), tracking WNW along South Eyre Road I noticed a distant bright white light which did not appear to be moving. My first thought was Venus. About 30 seconds later it looked more like Mars, reddish, with a very faint greenish tinge on its left side

It seemed to remain the same size for what seemed like several minutes, then very, very suddenly it increased in size and had a green and a red light at the edges.

Part of my normal pre flight check is "camera and battery".

I took several shots of this object (as you do - when everything else is churning along nicely).

I do not use the stabiliser on my camera so I got these views of what I think was a Beech 1900 inbound from Hokitika.

It passed about 3000ft overhead.

The lesson for the day was, I think, the speed that this light developed into a full blown aircraft.