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Aurora

Entry 84, on 2004-11-11 at 14:13:22 (Rating 1, Science)

Last night there was a spectacular aurora australis (also known as the southern lights, the southern hemisphere equivalent of the aurora borealis) visible from Dunedin. I started watching around 10 pm and finished about 30 minutes after midnight when some light cloud arrived.

At its peak the aurora covered almost the whole sky with a phenomenon called "flaming" where sheets of light shoot up the sky in a second or less. Its really quite spectacular when that happens. Between the outbreaks of flaming there were bright curtains and rays visible in the southern part of the sky.

A lot of the time the aurora wasn't bright enough to show colour but during the brighter phases bright green and yellow could be seen in the curtains and purples and reds in some of the rays. I've seen brighter, more spectacular displays in the past, but this one was a bonus because it was unexpected during a solar activity minimum (sunspot activity on the Sun causes the aurora we see on Earth).

Unfortunately, my current digital camera isn't very well suited to astrophotography so I had limited success with photos, but I did get some which captured some of the appearance of the event. If you are reading this blog from my web site you will see a photo of the curtains and rays in the south below. The photo covers about one sixth of the horizon and about half way up the sky.

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