“Normally, displays like this you can see most easily from southern New Zealand, but my understanding is a lot of people in the North Island last night got a good show, too,” Griffin said.
Aurora is the result of material being ejected from the sun toward Earth entering our atmosphere, where it reacts with particles at the Earth’s geomagnetic poles. This creates the eerie glowing lights that can be seen in the sky.
Aurora fans are hopeful the show might still be visible after dark on King’s Birthday Monday, too.
Griffin said this latest burst of aurora appeared after a strong explosion on the sun: “It was quite a strong explosion that threw a whole bunch of material towards the earth.
“Fingers crossed it might persist until darkness tonight [Monday], and we might get another evening as well.”
Aurora are best seen using camera lenses that are more sensitive than our eyes, but sometimes – like last night – are strong enough to be seen with the naked eye too.
Griffin advised those hoping to get a glimpse of the lights to go to a dark spot, away from manmade lights and towns, with a good view of the stars.
He said New Zealanders were seeing more auroras than normal at the moment.
“We’re quite a long way from the really active area of the aurora,” Griffin said. “And it’s only at times near solar maximum that we get these displays like we had last night, when they were overhead.”
Photographers Grant Birley and Matthew Davison made a dash to the South Island from Auckland to escape the clouds and give themselves the best chance of capturing the magic of the aurora.
They set up at Lake Ellesmere in Canterbury about 10.30pm where Birley said, “We could see faint colour to the naked eye but we could clearly see the aurora move and dance across the sky. We could see the beams bouncing on the horizon and then, like fingers, stretching high up into the sky and above us.
“As time went on, so the yellow auroral glow seemed to spread wider and wider on the horizon and climb higher and higher in the sky, like a dome,” said Birley. “It was a dull yellow to the eye at best but, as it got larger, so it got brighter until all of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I saw auroral pillars/beams reaching into the sky.”
The prospects for King’s Birthday Monday were looking hopeful. Forecasters at the US Government’s Space Weather Prediction Centre said that between 3pm and 6pm NZT on Monday global magnetic conditions – referred to as Kp – could reach as high was nearly 8Kp, and could remain above 6Kp until midnight NZT (midday UTC).
At levels of 6Kp and above, aurora move much further across the globe than just the North and South Poles where they are more usually confined to, and can “become quite bright and active”, the agency said. At 8Kp, that intensifies and becomes even more bright, and more places may be able to see them. “These are the events that create the best aurora and the extended auroral oval will be observable by the most people,” they said.
Conditions were promising for auroras for the next six to 12 months, Griffin said, because the sun’s magnetic activity was in the most active phase of its 11-year cycle.
Winter offered advantages for aurora spotters because the night was dark for longer. But New Zealand had a good geographic position when it came to aurora spotting, and it gave good opportunities through the rest of the year too, Griffin said.
“One of the coolest things about New Zealand is it’s pretty much the only place in the world where you can watch an aurora in the middle of summer, wearing shorts and jandals.”
On Sunday night some Australian aurora fans also got a glimpse of the lights, which are rarely spotted across the ditch. ABC reported spotters as far north as Tamworth north of Sydney, in New South Wales, had seen the lights.
Cressida Toorenburg told the ABC she had seen the natural light show from East Devonport, in Tasmania, after the clouds cleared away.
“We sat for half an hour in the hope that the clouds would move away and then wow,” she said.
“There was Lady Aurora! It was breathtaking – you could see her with the naked eye, but much bigger and brighter through the screen on my phone.”
Toorenburg said she had lived in the area for seven years and never seen an aurora as dazzling.
“The colours were so beautiful and vibrant,” she said.
– RNZ
