There’s another chance to catch the spectral spectacular on Monday night as the solar storm rages on.
“The activity may continue into tonight, so aurora watchers should be prepared,” said a co-director of Swinburne University of Technology’s Space Technology and Industry Institute, Dr Rebecca Allen.
“Auroras are caused when our sun ejects energetic particles as ‘storms’. These particles collide with our magnetic field and smash into the atmosphere near the poles,” Allen said, which is why the phenomenon is normally seen close to the Arctic and Antarctic.
“More powerful storms will create aurora that can be seen beyond that.”
The aurora australis lights up the sky off Gerroa with magenta and beams of orange.Credit: David Findlay/@wouldyouliketoknowmore
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States alerted to a possible major geomagnetic storm on Sunday morning (AEST), forecast at a G3 (strong) or G4 (severe) rating, powerful enough to produce auroras at the mid-latitudes.
The storm was caused by a coronal mass ejection, or eruption of plasma from the sun, and reached G4 strength. With the right trajectory, solar flares slam into Earth between 15 and 18 hours after lashing out from the sun.
The sun is at the peak of its 11-year energy pattern, which cycles between periods of stormy geomagnetic chaos and relative calm. The intense activity of the “solar maximum” will last a year or two before activity wanes.
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“At the height of the solar cycle, the sun’s magnetic pole flips … and the sun transitions from being rather sluggish to being really active and stormy,” astronomer Kelly Korreck from NASA said last year as the peak of the solar cycle began.
“We anticipate additional solar and geomagnetic storms leading to opportunities to spot the aurora over the next several months, as well as potential technology impacts.”
In May last year, the most powerful solar storm in two decades struck Earth and conjured some of the strongest auroras in 500 years. A sufficiently powerful solar flare could also cripple our electricity grids and damage satellites.
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