Witnessing the Aurora Australis was surreal, an indescribable moment that I will never forget
New Zealand has many fantastic attractions, and Aurora Australis, the Southern Lights, is one of the most magical. My family and I were lucky to see the Southern Lights on our last trip to Southland. It was on the bucket list, but I never thought it would happen.
It played out like this: After flying down from Auckland, we picked up a rental car from Queenstown Airport around 8 p.m. The car journey from there was typically beautiful Queenstown, as we saw the sunset over Lake Wakatipu and drove past the Devil’s Staircase on the way to Kingston.
Around 10-11 p.m., driving past Lumsdun towards Invercargill, we noticed low clouds on the horizon. However, the clouds started shimmering and pulsing vertically, like ghostly curtains in the night. Suddenly, it dawned on us that we were watching the Aurora Australis—the Southern Lights. We could not believe we were witnessing them.
When we viewed the photographs later, we didn’t realise that the Southern Lights were brighter than they appeared live. We saw the green but no pink, but the iPhone set in night mode brought out the pink.
However, it was a privilege to watch it, and I will never forget this moment.
What causes the Aurora Australis?
The Sun’s corona – the outermost region of the Sun’s atmosphere, consisting of plasma (hot ionized gas) – drives the solar wind (a particle flux of protons and electrons) away from the Sun. Some of these high-energy particles strike Earth’s magnetic field and follow magnetic field lines down into Earth’s atmosphere at the North and South magnetic poles. Earth’s atmosphere is mainly made up of nitrogen and oxygen.
When the solar particles reach Earth’s atmosphere, they collide with nitrogen and oxygen atoms, stripping away their electrons to leave ions in excited states. These ions emit radiation at various wavelengths, creating characteristic colours.
Collisions of solar particles with oxygen produce red or green light; collisions with nitrogen produce green and purple light.
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica
