{"id":259746,"date":"2025-11-13T03:43:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T03:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/259746\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T03:43:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T03:43:07","slug":"stunning-aurora-australis-lights-up-sky-above-new-zealand-and-australia-after-cannibal-solar-storm-astronomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/259746\/","title":{"rendered":"Stunning aurora australis lights up sky above New Zealand and Australia after \u2018cannibal\u2019 solar storm | Astronomy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Skywatchers enjoyed a stunning treat on Wednesday night, with the southern lights visible across large parts of Australia and New Zealand<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The aurora australis that lit up the sky resulted from what has been dubbed a \u201ccannibal\u201d solar storm.<\/p>\n

On social media, aurora viewers shared images from across the country, as far north as Port Macquarie in New South Wales<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Waves of light over Pirates Bay on the Tasman Peninsula, Tasmania. Photograph: Julian Witek<\/p>\n

Over Australia, the storm \u2013 caused by powerful bursts of energy from the sun \u2013 reached \u201cG4 geomagnetic storm conditions\u201d on Wednesday, according to the Bureau of Meteorology\u2019s space weather forecasting centre<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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In the UK, local activity reached a G5 rating in the early hours of Wednesday morning UK time, according to the British Geological Survey (BGS) \u2013 the maximum on the geomagnetic storm scale.<\/p>\n

Dr Laura Driessen from the Sydney Institute for Astronomy<\/a> said there was \u201ca really strong and magnetically active sunspot on the sun at the moment\u201d.<\/p>\n

Timelapse of the aurora in Tasmania<\/a>Timelapse of the aurora in Tasmania<\/p>\n

Since 9 November, the sun has released two strong coronal mass ejections \u2013 bursts of high-energy plasma \u2013 towards Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey happened at two different times on the ninth and the 10th,\u201d Driessen said. \u201cBasically, the one on the 10th was a bit faster, so it caught up with the one on the ninth.\u201d<\/p>\n

The BGS told CNN<\/a>: \u201cThe second one caught up with the first one and they amalgamated together by the time they reached Earth. Hence, the term \u2018cannibalised\u2019, as the second one gobbled up the first one.\u201d<\/p>\n

The view from Fossil Island in Tasmania. Photograph: Julian Witek<\/p>\n

The double hit of the cannibal solar storm has resulted in the largest induced geoelectric field<\/a> to be recorded in the UK since BGS records began in 2012.<\/p>\n

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According to the BGS, an electric field in the Earth\u2019s surface can result from solar storms, and produce electrical currents with the potential to damage transformers in the power grid.<\/p>\n

In the US, it also postponed the launch of two Mars-bound Nasa spacecraft. Blue Origin, the space tech company behind the mission\u2019s launch vehicle, said in a post on X: \u201cDue to highly elevated solar activity and its potential effects on the ESCAPADE spacecraft, NASA is postponing launch until space weather conditions improve.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waterfall Bay Lookout in Tasmania at 12:18\u202fam. Photograph: Julian Witek<\/p>\n

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

Auroras result from disturbances to the Earth\u2019s magnetic field, known as the magnetosphere.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re seeing charged particles that are falling on to the Earth\u2019s magnetic field and essentially being tunnelled down some of our magnetic field lines and interacting with the gases and the dust that we have in our atmosphere,\u201d Dr Sara Webb, an astrophysicist at Swinburne University, said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Skywatchers enjoyed a stunning treat on Wednesday night, with the southern lights visible across large parts of Australia…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-259746","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\/259746","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=259746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}