[OzEclipse (Joe Cali)]

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