Aurora Tracks manager Pentikäinen recently joined an Aurora Australis Southern Lights chasing trip organised by prominent aurora hunter Arun Chandran, in Hobart Tasmania. This is her report.
Off the back of my recent aurora-chasing trip to Southport Tasmania in July this year, I joined a meetup group of chasers led by aurora australis hunter and book author Arun Chandran.
I hadn’t previously met Arun or attended any of his Explore Melbourne group trips, so I was simultaneously nervous and honoured to be able to meet, learn from and spend time with someone so experienced in this field.
In this trip report, I share the adventures we went on, auroras we chased, and lessons learnt for other aurora australis hunters.
Introduction to the Southern Lights Aurora Australis
Aurora australis, commonly known as the southern lights, is the southern hemisphere equivalent of the much more famous northern lights (aurora borealis). This southern aurora phenomenon is the same as the northern lights, the difference being that the southern lights is active around the Antarctic (south pole) while the northern lights is active around the Arctic (north pole).
The challenges of travelling to see the aurora australis
Recently, perhaps because of the fact that we’re in a solar maximum, the aurora australis has become a talking point even amongst those who don’t consider themselves outdoor adventurers. Here, on mainland Australia, even popular kids TV shows have been talking about it, as well as my colleagues in the office! But, much of the media surrounding the aurora australis has overhyped the phenomenon to the point of implying that it’s comparable with stepping out your door and seeing the Northern Lights above you (it’s not), so if you’re planning to see the southern lights, it’s important to set realistic expectations.
If you’re reading this article to help you plan a trip to see the aurora australis, first and foremost you need to know that it is difficult to plan a trip around, and your chances of seeing the aurora australis are based on pure luck of the sun and weather.
Without diving deeply into the reasons why, since we’ve already discussed it in detail in our aurora australis hunting guides here, the aurora australis southern lights are significantly more difficult to ‘catch’ than the northern lights, for two simple reasons: landmass and latitude.
The importance of Latitude
To see the aurora, around either of the poles, we need a high latitude (°N or °S). In other words, we need to be positioned as close to the poles of the earth as possible.
For the northern lights, this is achievable, because there is inhabited landmass throughout the Arctic (north pole). Many towns and cities throughout Alaska, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Lapland (Finland, Sweden), Svalbard and Russia fall within the Arctic Circle, and therefore have the optimal latitude for aurora-gazing.
The challenge of Landmass in the southern hemisphere
In the southern hemisphere, however, the south pole consists almost entirely of ocean and inhospitable landmass. The icy continent of Antarctica is the only major landmass which falls within the Antarctic circle, and has no permanent population, making it difficult and expensive to travel to.
This means every accessible spot within the southern hemisphere is outside the auroral oval, at a latitude that is lower than ideal for reliably seeing the aurora australis (southern lights). That doesn’t make it impossible to see the aurora australis, it just means it’s less commonly observed and usually much fainter than the northern lights.
In a solar cycle peak year like we are in now, there have been countless photos of the aurora australis as far north as Wollongong, Australia. However, catching the aurora in regions outside the auroral oval is much more dependent on strong geomagnetic storms, which don’t occur often and are impossible to forecast with enough notice to plan a trip around.
Setting realistic expectations
For this trip, we went in with realistic expectations and were well-aware of the uncertainty of seeing the aurora australis. Since aurora activity is reliant on the geomagnetic conditions, and there is no controlling of nature, we knew there was a chance we would come home with no sightings at all. With that in mind, Arun did an excellent job of setting all our ducks in a row – solar cycle peak year, the spring equinox, a new/dark moon, and carefully selected dark spots for aurora-viewing away from city lights.
So, with all that considered, we headed off to our 6-day aurora hunt to try our luck. The rest was up to the solar conditions and the local weather. Fingers crossed!
Chasing Aurora Australis Southern Lights in Hobart Tasmania – Trip Report 2024
Trip Title: Chasing Aurora (Southern Lights) in Tasmania & Exploring Hobart
Organiser: Arun Chandran, Explore Melbourne
Dates: Friday 27 September to Wednesday 2 October 2024
Location: Hobart region and surrounds, Tasmania, Australia
Date | Aurora Chase Location (Hobart region) |
---|---|
Friday 27 September | Location: Margate Boat Ramp Aurora: Visible, faint |
Saturday 28 September | Location – Group: Tinderbox Beach Location – Me: Taroona Beach Aurora: Visible, very faint, clouded |
Sunday 29 September | Location: Tinderbox Beach Aurora: Visible, very strong |
Monday 30 September | Location: Taroona Beach Aurora: Visible, faint |
Tuesday 1 October | Location: Howden Boat Ramp Aurora: None |
My Daily Trip Report for Southern Lights Aurora Australis
Day 1: Friday 27 September (Margate Boat Ramp)
Friday was the first day of the trip. Most of the group landed into Hobart on late Friday afternoon, and went out aurora-hunting that night at the boat ramp in Margate.
I have little personally to report from the Friday, since I didn’t join the aurora-hunting group that night. After a long day of travel, and a mix-up with the Metro Tasmania Bus timetable, which left me stranded somewhere I didn’t intend to be, I decided to take a long scenic walk back to my accommodation and start fresh in the morning instead.
During my walk back I stopped at Dixon Beach, and spent some time sitting, observing and photographing the night sky on a dark patch of beach. The stars were visible but muffled by a thin veil of cloud. I didn’t see any aurora activity from that location, but the beach was facing East, so the view of an aurora, if present, would have been way off to the side. If faced with the opportunity again, next time I would walk to the next beach along, Taroona Beach, which is mostly south-facing.
The report from Arun and the group the next morning was that they did see the aurora faintly from Margate, around 7:30pm. Excellent news… despite my having missed it.
Day 2: Saturday 28 September (Tinderbox Beach)
We met up in the morning to explore Salamanca Markets in Hobart, and some of the group joined a tour to Mt Wellington for some daytime social fun, while we waited for the night to begin.
In the afternoon Arun advised us that the geomagnetic conditions were not looking good. As he described it, there was a small geomagnetic substorm in progress, however, the Bz alignment was not quite right. Therefore, in his opinion the chances were low for aurora, which I confirmed on the Glendale aurora app.
After some thought, I decided to skip that night’s aurora-chase. A combination of weak aurora forecast and increasing cloud cover, didn’t really make the effort and price of catching buses and Uber to the remote beach meeting point worth it.
I instead went for a late-afternoon walk to scope out nearby Taroona Beach as a potential aurora-watching spot, and to test my camera settings. Taroona Beach is more south-facing than Dixon Beach which I was at yesterday. The Google profile for Taroona Beach has a user-submitted photo of a bright purple aurora; definitely a good sign. This was a place I could go if I needed to stumble out for some last-minute aurora hunting by myself, since the forecast can change very quickly.
Well… almost as soon as I got back to my apartment from my walk, settled in with a glass of wine and a good book, a report of a CME came through. There was a minor substorm in progress, and mild aurora activity could be expected.
The cloud cover was thin and patchy, so I packed up, and started out on the same walk I had just returned from. I arrived at Taroona Beach around 7:15pm, and there it was. Towards the south, a very faint aurora glowing over the land. The aurora was nothing to get too excited about, and many people would have missed it, since it was so faint and diffuse through the clouds. However, after our trip to Southport Tasmania in July, I knew what to look for, and how to not dismiss it for something else.
Mentally, this is the checklist I went through to verify it was an aurora:
- Was it moving? Yes, it slowly faded in and out of view repeatedly over a period of an hour. Moon and city lights are static, they don’t move like that.
- Was it the moon? No.
- Was it city lights? I didn’t think so, since there was just a small village below, and no large cities to the south.
- Was it the sun? No, the light was in the south. Sunset is to the west.
The brightness of the aurora was about the same as the photos I took on our earlier trip to Southport. Not impressive, but enough to prove its existence!
Day 3: Sunday 29 September (Tinderbox Beach)
I woke up to a very cloudy sky, and wondered over breakfast how this would play out for our aurora hunting this evening. Until then, several of us spent the day at MONA (Museum of Old and New Art), which is absolutely my idea of a perfect day out… complete with wine and pizza!
In the late afternoon, Arun announced that the cloud was clearing and that there was some aurora activity, so game on for our hunt. We met at 7pm, and proceeded to our aurora hunting spot of Tinderbox Beach via Uber.
As our half of the group arrived on location, we found some other members of the group already well underway with their aurora photography. The aurora activity tonight was very strong, and there was plenty of photographic activity to prove it.
The activity lasted a long time, and we spent a few good hours spending time on the shoreline, chatting, exploring and photographing.
The only downside of the night would have been the challenge of getting an Uber or Taxi back from a dark beach in the middle of nowhere, at midnight on a Sunday night. We waited about 3 hours for an Uber willing to come and pick us up, and I was mentally preparing myself for an overnight stay on the beach! But the upside of that, while we were waiting, another burst of strong aurora activity came through for the few of us still remaining to enjoy.
Day 4: Monday 30 October (Taroona Beach)
The aurora forecast was not looking fantastic for tonight, so hopes were not high. The aurora hunting location for tonight was Taroona Beach, within convenient walking distance to my accommodation.
I walked down to the beach earlier than the rest of the group, so I could practice night photography. I don’t consider myself a photographer, so I spent the better part of the day learning how to use the various different manual DSLR camera settings and how to optimise them for night photography. I was therefore keen to start putting into practice what I had learnt as soon as it got dark enough.
For most of the night there was no activity, so we spent the night chatting, laughing and taking photos of the stars. However, as Murphy’s Law would have it, at the very point in time when the group was starting to depart, some aurora activity kicked up.
Many of us stayed back to enjoy the experience. I managed to take some photos of a faint green aurora, so while it was no repeat of the night before, I was happy nonetheless.
Day 5: Tuesday 1 October (Howden Boat Ramp)
The aurora forecast for our last night of the trip was not good. A combination of low-no forecasted aurora activity, combined with what appeared to be increasing cloud cover (despite weather reports for clear skies), led to my decision to sit the night out.
Arun did invite us out for a 4am expedition to watch the Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS). However, with an early checkout and flight, I decided to save my energy for the return trip home.
Final Thoughts & Aurora Australis Travel Tips
All in all, this was a truly enjoyable trip with great people, which achieved our primary goal of seeing and photographing the aurora australis southern nights in Tasmania. To wrap up this trip report, below are my lessons learnt (the hard way).
Glendale app is the best aurora australis app
Arun recommended to us the Glendale app for aurora australis forecasts, and I fell in love with it immediately. For aurora australis, it is the first and only forecasting app that I have personally found is actually reliable. A couple of weeks later I used it to plan my timing for seeing and photographing the aurora from my home, in the Canberra region, and it was spot on. Until then I had been using the Australian Space Weather / Bureau of Meteorology forecasts, which pale in comparison to Glendale.
Based on this experience, I will update the best aurora app article on this website to include it. It really should be at the top of any aurora hunter’s list of tools.
Don’t rely on public transport
If you’re going to remote regions in the country or coast, which you probably will because they’re the darkest places to see the aurora from – don’t rely on public transport. Even taxis and Ubers aren’t guaranteed to pick you up, especially in the middle of the night from a dark beach, as we learnt.
Hire a car, or if you’ve got the option, join a tour group with their own transport. Alternatively, take a tent and be prepared to camp the night.
Don’t get stuck in one spot taking photos
Consider moving around to get different shots of the landscape. When I looked back at my aurora photos, they all looked the same, despite being taken at different times of the night. This is because I set my tripod in one place and was too lazy to move it elsewhere. Shoot from a few different spots to add variety to your photo album.
Take your camera
An important thing to note, that many aurora australis chasers don’t really seem to speak about or admit, is that the aurora australis is rarely visible to the naked eye. Even on the night when there was strong activity, the aurora was not visible to the naked eye in the sense that many people think of it.
Yes, there was faint light in the sky that was visible to the naked eye, but you could not naturally see any distinct aurora colours like you see in the photos; only a camera with long-exposure picked those lovely colours up.
So, even if you’re not a photographer, take your camera and learn how to shoot a long exposure, so you can really see the aurora in all it’s glory.
Thank you
Lastly, I would like to give my sincere thanks to Arun Chandran who organized the trip. His excellent planning, attentiveness to choosing the best locations, and confident use of aurora forecasting tools, is what really made this trip a success. Thank you, Arun.
You can check out more from Arun Chandran at:
- Socials: Facebook Group – Aurora Australis Australia
- Book: Chasing Aurora Australis by Arun Chandran (Amazon)
- Events: Visit Explore Melbourne for other events like this, that you can join.
Happy aurora hunting!
Comments. Our articles are not open to comments, however, if you have a correction, question or suggestion concerning this article, please Contact Us directly.