{"id":258311,"date":"2025-11-12T08:12:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T08:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/258311\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T08:12:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T08:12:07","slug":"aurora-australis-southern-lights-to-be-visible-across-large-parts-of-australia-amid-severe-solar-storm-astronomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/258311\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora australis: southern lights to be visible across large parts of Australia amid severe solar storm | Astronomy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Skywatchers may be treated to a celestial delight on Wednesday evening, with a severe solar storm making it possible to view the southern lights across large parts of Australia \u2013 possibly including Sydney and Perth<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Displays of the northern lights, also known as aurora borealis, were visible in the northern hemisphere<\/a> overnight on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Where might their southern counterpart, the aurora australis, be visible? What impacts might the severe solar storm have? Here\u2019s what to expect.<\/p>\n

Where and what time is best to watch the aurora australis? <\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the strength of this storm, there\u2019s a chance people farther north than typically expected in the southern hemisphere might be able to see it,\u201d astronomer Dr Laura Driessen, from the Sydney Institute for Astronomy said, adding it could be visible to people in Sydney and Perth.<\/p>\n

\u201cTasmania and New Zealand should get a decent view,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Wednesday night was \u201cthe best chance for people to go outside and try catch a glimpse of the aurora,\u201d Dr Sara Webb, an astrophysicist at Swinburne University, said. \u201cIt looks like it\u2019s going to be very high up the southern coast of Australia, so visible from parts of Victoria and New South Wales.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it comes to aurora viewing, experts recommend heading somewhere dark, away from city lights, looking to the south, and allowing your eyes to acclimatise to the darkness first.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou might just see a hint of it with your naked eye, you might see something a little bit fuzzy, maybe a little bit red. That\u2019s when it\u2019s time to take out your camera and take a long exposure \u2013 you can do this on your mobile phone,\u201d Webb said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSet your camera to take, say, a 10-second photo \u2026 you\u2019ll often find that when you look back at the photo over those 10 seconds, your phone has collected more light than your eyes can process.\u201d<\/p>\n

What causes the aurora australis? <\/p>\n

According to the BoM on Wednesday, \u201cG4 geomagnetic storm conditions are currently being observed.\u201d The maximum on the geomagnetic storm scale is a G5.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is quite an intense geomagnetic storm, one of the largest that we\u2019ve seen in recent years,\u201d Webb said .<\/p>\n

The sun has an activity cycle of about 11 years, which peaked last October<\/a>. Around that solar maximum, \u201cwe get more sunspots, which are areas where there\u2019s magnetic activity,\u201d Webb said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also see things like coronal mass ejections \u2026 we get some of the magnetic field lines from the sun interacting with each other, essentially breaking, and releasing energy and plasma towards us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two \u201cmassive\u201d coronal mass ejections have been observed since 9 November, which were expected to hit Earth on Wednesday afternoon, Webb said. These bursts of high-energy plasma disturb the Earth\u2019s magnetic field, known as the magnetosphere.<\/p>\n

Auroras, or aurorae, result from that disturbance.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of this in combination adds energy to some particles in our atmosphere,\u201d Driessen said. \u201cA lot of the colours we see are from oxygen and neon getting excited \u2013 as those particles calm back down again they emit these beautiful coloured lights.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

Will communications be disrupted in the solar storm?<\/p>\n

Experts say major impacts are rare.<\/p>\n

However, severe solar storms can impact radio infrastructure and satellites.<\/p>\n

The highly charged particles from these storms can disrupt GPS and observation satellites, Webb said. \u201cWhat it might mean is that the satellite companies need to put their\u00a0satellites into sleep mode \u2013 essentially, they shut them down so that there\u2019s less risk of damage.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2022, a solar storm caused dozens of Starlink satellites<\/a> to burn up in Earth\u2019s atmosphere.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut really it\u2019s quite rare, and a lot of satellites are built to withstand a certain level of these type of events,\u201d Webb said.<\/p>\n

In 2003, intense geomagnetic storms resulted in a blackout in Sweden<\/a>, disrupted flights in the northern hemisphere and affected over half<\/a> of all Earth-orbiting spacecraft.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s something that we need to keep an eye out [for], but there\u2019s \u2026 no major warnings [of] that happening,\u201d Webb said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Skywatchers may be treated to a celestial delight on Wednesday evening, with a severe solar storm making it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-258311","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-space","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}