{"id":425572,"date":"2026-01-20T13:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T13:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/425572\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T13:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T13:46:09","slug":"aurora-australis-alert-2026-severe-solar-radiation-flare-may-spark-rare-southern-lights-tonight-everything-you-need-to-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/425572\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora Australis alert 2026: Severe solar radiation flare may spark rare Southern Lights tonight, everything you need to know"},"content":{"rendered":"

A powerful geomagnetic storm currently in progress could trigger the aurora australis<\/a> and set the skies above the country ablaze in colourful lights tonight\ufeff.<\/p>\n

But the rare phenomenon won’t be visible in every state, if it happens at all.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, the sun released a powerful solar flare which \ufeffsent a coronal mass ejection (CME) speeding towards Earth.<\/p>\n

\"AuroraThe aurora australis captured in Hobart, Tasmania back in 2024. (Dave Risley)<\/p>\n

CMEs are large expulsions of plasma and magnetic field that can travel at speeds of up to 3000km\/s, and this one kicked off a major geomagnetic storm.<\/p>\n

The Bureau of Meteorology’s (BoM) Australian Space Weather Forecasting System even issued an alert about the disturbance yesterday.<\/p>\n

“The Bureau continues to monitor the situation and will provide updates of significant changes,” a spokesperson told 9news.com.au.<\/p>\n

It all sounds \ufefflike something out of a sci-fi film like Armageddon but Swinburne University of Technology astrophysics lecturer Dr Kirsten Banks said it’s normal.<\/p>\n

\ufeff”The sun does release lots of flares, especially around this time of its cycle,” she said.<\/p>\n

“This is very natural.”\ufeff<\/p>\n

The sun follows an 11-year cycle in which it shifts from being not very active to \ufeffvery active, and right now it’s in a very active phase.<\/p>\n

But what does that have to do with the aurora Australis?<\/p>\n

\ufeffWhen the sun releases a CME, energy and charged particles may \ufeffcollide with the Earth’s atmosphere and interact with the Earth’s magnetic field, causing geomagnetic storms.<\/p>\n

\"AA solar flare sent a coronal mass ejection hurtling towards earth yesterday, but it could have stunning results. (NASA \/ GSFC \/ Solar Dynamics Observatory)<\/p>\n

That can push \ufeffcharged particles like electrons further down into the atmosphere near the Earth’s magnetic poles.<\/p>\n

Those particles interact with other particles in the atmosphere, like oxygen and nitrogen, to produce colourful aurora.<\/p>\n

And Australians in the nation’s south have the chance to witness the rare phenomenon tonight.\ufeff<\/p>\n

People in \ufeffVictoria, Tasmania, and the southern parts of South Australia and Western Australia may see the aurora australis with the naked eye tonight.<\/p>\n

“Bright auroras can be visible at lower latitudes than usual when geomagnetic storms at this intensity occur, including dark-sky locations in the southern Australian region,” the BoM spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

“As current geomagnetic storm conditions are ongoing, there is a chance that the aurora may be visible this evening, although the chance of auroral sightings may decrease if and when storming conditions begin to subside.”<\/p>\n

\"ThisThis photo of the aurora was taken from Brighton Beach with a smartphone camera on November 12, 2025, during another G4 geomagnetic storm. (Dr Kirsten Banks)<\/p>\n

Banks witnessed the aurora australis from Brighton in Melbourne the last time an event like this happened in November 2025.<\/p>\n

She urged Aussies to take the chance to see them again tonight.\ufeff<\/p>\n

“It’s always a good time to look up at the night sky, today’s just extra special,” she said.<\/p>\n

As for whether Aussies should be worried about negative impacts from the ongoing geomagnetic storm, Banks said the risks of something going wrong are low.\ufeff<\/p>\n

“Satellites that are higher up in orbit around the Earth may get affected by this solar activity,” she said.<\/p>\n

“And we do need to put in protective measures to help our uh power grids to not surge from all this activity if we do have [a major event].”<\/p>\n

Otherwise, her advice to everyone in the southern parts of Australia is to \ufeffget the binoculars and train them on the sky tonight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A powerful geomagnetic storm currently in progress could trigger the aurora australis and set the skies above the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285],"class_list":["post-425572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}