You don't need a telescope to catch this one.
The sun let out two strong solar flares close together this week, including a powerful X class flare, and the southern lights could be visible across parts of Australia on Friday, July 3, and again overnight into Saturday, July 4.
Winter skies are working in your favor right now. Longer nights and earlier darkness mean more of a window to actually catch the aurora before you have to be up for work in the morning.
Two nights gives you a second shot if the first one gets clouded out, so it is worth checking the sky on both.
Why the sky is putting on a show this week
The sun has been unusually busy lately. Along with the flares, it also fired off a coronal mass ejection, which is basically a massive cloud of charged particles thrown outward into space. That cloud takes a few days to travel the distance between the sun and Earth, and it is expected to arrive right around now.
When that material reaches us, it interacts with Earth's magnetic field, and that interaction is what creates the aurora in the first place, both the northern lights up in Canada and the southern lights down here. It shows up as ribbons of green, sometimes pink, sometimes a deeper red, moving slowly across the sky.
A more intense aurora is possible across most of Tasmania, with a real shot from southern parts of New South Wales, parts of Melbourne and even Adelaide during a strong display. The further south you are, the better your odds, but this kind of solar storm can push visibility further north than usual.
The sun goes through an activity cycle that runs roughly eleven years, and right now it is near the busiest stretch of that cycle. That means more flares, more solar storms, and more nights like this one for the next while.
How to actually see it
The aurora does not need to be directly overhead for you to see it. A bright display can sometimes be spotted from hundreds of kilometers away from where it is actually happening, so even people outside the most likely viewing zones still have a shot.
Timing matters. The southern lights typically show up a few hours after sunset and tend to get more active later in the night, often well after 10pm.
Location matters just as much. Find a spot with little or no light pollution. A dark beach, a rural paddock, a hilltop, or anywhere away from streetlights and city glow will give you a much better shot than a balcony in the city. Give your eyes ten or fifteen minutes to adjust once you are out there.
Once you are settled in, look south, low on the horizon. The southern lights often sit closer to the horizon than people expect, so scan that whole stretch of sky rather than just straight up.
You do not need a telescope or expensive camera gear. Most modern phones handle low light well enough to pick up color that your eyes might miss at first. If the sky just looks like a faint haze or a strange cloud low on the horizon, try snapping a photo before you assume nothing is happening. A few extra seconds of exposure can reveal a lot more than a quick glance.
Rug up. Winter nights get cold fast once the sun is gone, especially anywhere near the coast.
Nights like this one are hard to predict more than a few days out, so if you do not want to keep checking the sky yourself, Aurora Admin's alert service will text you when conditions are actually lining up in your area.
Rug up, find some darkness, and look south. Nights like this one do not come around all that often, and this week the sun is giving us a good reason to make the most of it.
