Contains:  Northern lights
Aurora Australis - The Halloween Aurora 2021, Bruce Rohrlach

Aurora Australis - The Halloween Aurora 2021

Aurora Australis - The Halloween Aurora 2021, Bruce Rohrlach

Aurora Australis - The Halloween Aurora 2021

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Aurora Australia (31-10-2021) - the Southern Lights - from the same location as the previous post, only this time with a 24mm lens giving a wider field of view over Pyramid Rock (Philip Island).

It was fortuitous that the Milky Way (in the background) was near sub-horizontal behind the pulsing aurora.

The solar wind speed at this point was just over 450 km per second.

For scale ..... the green aurora typically occur at 120-180km above the earths surface. i.e. The base of the green aurora here is around 10 times greater height than the typical maximum height that commercial airliners fly at. The curvature of the earth between my location on the Victorian coastline and 500km south of Tasmania causes the base of the green Aurora to look closer to the ocean than 120 km, as the earth drops away beyond the visual horizon.

The red-pink aurora can extend up to 640 km above the earth, and past the orbital distance of the International Space Station, which often flies through the aurora.

There was another spectacular display 4 nights later.

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Aurora Australis - The Halloween Aurora 2021, Bruce Rohrlach