Aurora Australis last Monday night [12-08-2024]

[OzEclipse]

The aurora was very active Monday night with the light pillars extending to about 18 degrees altitude from my Central West NSW site at 34S latitude.

Our night (scotopic) vision can't see colour, our bright light (photopic) vision does see colour. At the big event last May, I saw very vivid strong colours.
This one was much fainter and right on the cusp in between my day and night (mesopic) vision and was only just showing very pale colour to the naked eye but the structure and pillars were easily visible to my dark-adapted but colourless night vision.

I took out my camp recliner lounge chair. It began to fade to the naked eye. I eventually fell asleep on the front deck watching it. The night wasn't particularly cold and I was dressed warmly enough so I woke up toasty warm and a bit groggy at about 230am.

The big ghostly glow in the upper centre of the image is the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf spiral galaxy that orbits the Milky Way. It is the largest naked eye object in the sky. In the dark skies out here on the best nights, I've observed it span up to 7 degrees including the outer arm to my naked eye, 14 x the diameter of the full moon.

This was much easier than the 700km cannonball run I had to do to see the Gannon Event last May.

cheers
Joe

[Saturnine]

Beautiful images and you don't even have to leave home to get them. To say that I'm envious would be an understatement, roughly, what times were the peak of the activity. Really wanted to catch the display but as usual it was raining and cloudy here and would've taken several hours driving at the least, to get to clear skies and I figured that the show may be over by the time I did. Also had a medical appointment next morning to add another complication.
Thanks for sharing the images.

[h0ughy]

stunning

[Leo.G]

Absolutely stunning shots Joe!

[OzEclipse]

Hi Jeff,
This event ramped up really quickly from a gentle placid glow to these moving pillars and then dropped back to a gentle glow.

All these images were taken between 1015pm and 1050pm. The southern sky was filled with an unstructured blanket glow after that for at least an hour and a half. Then I drifted off to sleep. When I woke up, at 230am, I saw no glow at all. But David Metcalf down near Yass has photos of pillars taken between 1am and 4am.

Cheers
Joe

[OzEclipse]

Thanks very much David and Leo!:D

[Saturnine]

Thanks for the background info Joe, appreciated. Maybe next time I'll get lucky.

[OzEclipse]

This one was so quick, if I'd had to go anywhere after it started, it would have been over by the time I arrived. The view across my front yard isn't the most aesthetic but I can respond quickly to an alert. Glendale App is probably the best for early warnings but you still have to respond quickly.

Joe

[gregbradley]

Brilliant Joe. So jealous.

Greg.

[N1]

Great captures Joe!
Right place, right time, well done.

[foc]

Great work!