Aurora Australis, the southern lights, captured on 35mm film from the Space Shuttle Discovery on August 6, 2005. (via)

Sometimes I read a Zutara fic classic and I want to scream “WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME ABOUT THIS, THIS IS SO UNDERRATED” even though it’s on like a million rec lists and everyone has already read it??? Like nobody told me Once Around The Sun or Southern Lights are THIS good, even though EVERYONE said they’re good, does that make sense. I didn’t know they’d give me book hangovers and possibly change my brain chemistry

An astronaut took this photograph of the Aurora Australis in August 2017. At the time, the International Space Station was moving over the southern Indian Ocean towards the Great Australian Bight and Melbourne, Australia.

For those of you interested in aurora-watching: There've been a couple of CMEs in the last day or so, and the wavefront of one of them is in the process of arriving in Earth orbit this evening. The larger one will be arriving sometime tomorrow.

There's no telling for sure whether significant auroral activity might be happening where you are... but if you want to be able to make an educated guess, the link above is for you. The maps there will give you 30-minute warning of whether anything's incoming that's likely to be visible.

Aurora Australis, Rokeby beach Tasmania April 2024, taken just on sunrise photo credit: Chris Blackaby

2023_02_27

“Explosions Of The Sky”

Taiari Beach, Otago, New Zealand.

By Kavan Chay

Northern Lights Photographer of the Year

Aurora and Orion - November 14th, 1995.

"Looking toward the south from low Earth orbit, the crew of the Space Shuttle Endeavor made this stunning time exposure of the Aurora Australis (southern lights) in April of 1994. The aurora are caused by high energy electrons from the solar wind, which are funneled into the atmosphere by the Earth's magnetic field. The reddish colours occur at the highest altitudes (about 200 miles) where the air is least dense. At lower altitudes and greater densities, green tends to dominate. At the lowest altitudes a pinkish glow is sometimes produced. The familiar constellation of Orion the Hunter is clearly visible above the dark horizon in the background. Because of the shuttle's orbital motion, the bright stars in Orion appear slightly elongated."

NASA shares stunning snaps of auroras captured in different locations and times in celebration of Dark Sky Week.

“The aurora borealis and aurora australis — also called the northern lights and southern lights — are more difficult to observe near the lights of cities and large metropolitan areas,” NASA writes.

📷: NASA / Instagram

Stunning photographs of auroras across the globe [via / sources]

everyone talks about the northern lights but the southern lights!

You've seen art of wolves under aurora borealis, well here's a literal polar opposite

Emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) in southern lights aka Aurora australis

Photo by Stefan Christmann

In 2011, ISS Expedition 29 crew members captured stunning images of the Aurora Australis, seen from a point over the southeast Tasman Sea near southern New Zealand.

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