The Why’s, How’s & Legends of the Aurora Australis or Southern Lights
Most people have heard of the famous Aurora Borealis, but they have a twin sister in the south as well – the Aurora Australis. But how does it work? Why do we have such strange happenings in the sky each winter? And what are the legends and myths surrounding them?
We will endeavour to answer those questions and more here today.
HOW
The Aurora Australis is a natural light phenomena visible in areas of high latitude around the Antarctic or very southern regions of our planet.
The cause of auroras, both in the South (Aurora Australis) and North (Aurora Borealis), directly result from solar activity. Storms on the surface of the Sun release streams of charged particles from the corona, this is known as a solar wind. Our planet has a magnetic field known as the magnetosphere; this field influences any charged particles which come nearby.
These charged particles then interact with various atoms and molecules that exist within our atmosphere, heating them and causing them to glow. The wave-like or ribbon-like structures appear because of the nature of Earth’s magnetic fields.
The colour of an aurora is dependent on with which gases the solar wind is primarily interacting.
Oxygen and nitrogen form the majority of our atmosphere.
Oxygen is responsible for shades of green, or extremely rarely red, while blue or purple shades are caused by nitrogen.
Both the Aurora Australis and the Aurora Borealis will occur simultaneously, but they are difficult to see in daylight.
LEGENDS
In ancient times, before the auroras could be so neatly explained through science, people understood them through a mystical lens. For Aboriginal Australians, auroras are often associated with fires or the dead, whether that be bushfires in the spirit world, or campfires lit by spirits. The Māori people of New Zealand also view it as fire, in the form of torches. They are lit by ancestors who had sailed south to Antarctica.
The best place to see these lights is to be as far south as you can, but depending on the severity of the solar storm it can be possible to see them further away from these areas. For the Aurora Australis, the Australia Bureau of Meteorology issues alerts when conditions are favourable here: https://www.sws.bom.gov.au/Aurora.
Or visit places like New Zealand, Southern Australia or Argentina etc during the winter or autumn months.