Very nice video Alex. Witnessing this is one of the few remaining things on my wish list. With any luck we will see some in latitudes near Adelaide in the coming year.
I'm going to Victoria in a couple of months for a photography workshop and Hobart for a conference later in the year - both weekends are FULL moon weekends...
Amazing vid !
I thought that these northern lights were only visible from higher latitudes (50 degrees and more), which means in the southern hemisphere in Antarctica only.
Hey Alex, great video... Was this when there was a level 5 forecast earlier in the week??? I thought we could not see an Aurora in Victoria unless it was around an 8 or 9.... i really want to see one during this 11 year peak cycle..
Good perserverance Alex and a great reward. Interesting to note that you saw no colour visually. This is a sign that the storm that created this display was a weak one. This type of storm was common at the start and end of the last three solar maxima that I have observed from the lower North Island of New Zealand.
I have seen over 50 aurora australis displays since 1978 and most of them have been from my backyard or a similar geo-magnetic latitude.I have seen numerous storms like the one you have photographed Alex, as well as a handful of Great Storms that have passed over my zenith and covered half of the sky.
Skysurfer, it is not your geographic latitude that counts it is your geo-magnetic one that is important. I have attached a map from Cycle 23 on which I have added some of the Geo-Mag Lat of -45 as it passes over New Zealand and Australia. This may not be precisely accurate now as the South Magnetic Pole (and its northern counterparts) are constently on the move, however it shows the point that I am trying to make.
My location is shown as a red square on the North Island at lattitude 40 south, while my Geo Mag Lat is -46, the same as Adelaide, which has a geographic lat of 34 south. What this means is for someone of the same Geo Mag Lat one would expect to see similar types of auroral forms to a similar height. To get an improved view an observer needs to move south by several degrees if possible. For Australians the box seats are in southern Tasmania, the closest land mass to the SMP apart from Antarctica.
I've added just a few of my favourites from Cycle 23. The first was nearly 12 years ago. Using a 28mm lens and Fuji 200 ISO film this is a 45 second exposure. Beautiful colours in a 'staircase' of rays, none of the colour could be seen with the naked-eye though!
A few years later it was really solar max and the colour was there for all to see! This is a shot with a 50 mm lens, a 10 second exposure with Fuji 400 film. It is vital to keep the exposures down to the shortest as possible as the rays move notoiceably in seconds. The brilliant orange colour was just as I saw it. The orange lasted only one minute, and is a blend of the green and red elements on display which you can see in the next shot taken with the 28mm again. This Great Auroral Storm lasted all night (Mar 31st 2011) and almost came around again the next night!
At the end of 2001 I caught another all nighter. We had plenty of rain in the days before the auroral storm so some low lying paddocks made a fine mirror lake for the night when I captured the Pointers & Crux reflecting nicely in a mix of the green arc and red rays.
Later that night I also caught the purple that Alex has found in some of his pictures, except mine came out blue. This is as a result of the earth's tilt, the tallest rays are sticking up above the earths' shadow and the red is being bleached blue in my case. This only happens from the spring equinox through to the autumn equinox. The last two shots are three 28mm ones stacked on top of each other to show how the rays passed through my zenith at one stage. The bottom of the rays were 100 km above the earth over the bottom of the South Island. The top of the rays were possibly a 1,000 km higher leaning north towards me and going beyond me! Only incredibly long comets like Halley in 1910 and Tebbutt in 1861 can compare in size with Great Auroral Storms!!
Having built you up with tales of the recent past, time to bring you back down to earth with a forecast for a grim future. The data for Sunspot Cycle 24 so far shows us that the sun has dropped energy levels on almost every wavelength, comparable to those of 100 or even 200 years ago. This is bad news for would be aurora observers. Most of the activity seen in SSC 24 so far has been viewed from high Geo Mag Lats(Norway, Alaska, Antarctica etc). Observers along the south of Australia as shown on the map attached and N.Z. are at mid latitudes. To see auroae that rise to heights greater than 20 degrees from mid latitudes then the Kp Index needs to be at 6-7 and great storms have Kp's that reach 8-9 for long periods. The chance of seeing such events in this cycle are very slim, but they are even worse for the next cycle.
Patience & perserverance have always been the catch cries for any avid aurora observer in the past, but even more so now!
Cheers
Ian Cooper
North Island Coordinator
Aurora & Solar Section
R.A.S.N.Z.
All i can do is reiterate the comments above, just bloody fantastic alex, well done and thankyou for posting. you continually up the anti and improve your technique. i really enjoyed this one
regards brad