Aurora chasers across the South were treated to clear skies as bright beams of light visible to the naked eyed streaked through a starry backdrop. Video / Ian Griffin / Tuhura Otago Museum
Last night was one for the Kiwi photographers, as images flooded in showing their prized captures of the Aurora southern lights following a solar storm hitting New Zealand.
Amongst those scrambling to capture the phenomenon was a part-time support worker in Christchurch whose dedication was finally rewarded.
Natalie Crowther has spent 10 years trying to capture solar flares after getting a taste of the Aurora lights when she was 18.
Last night, she captured them in spectacular fashion over Lake Ellesmere.
“It was just joy. Lots of joy,” she told the Herald, recounting her efforts last night.
“I messaged my mum and said ‘I feel like I’m gonna cry’, it was so amazing to see.”
Natalie Crowther has spent 10 years trying to capture solar flares after getting a taste of the Aurora lights when she was 18. Photo / Natalie Crowther
The 29-year-old has typically headed to her secret hunting ground near the lake twice or three times a year for the last decade. She uses an Aurora-tracking website to give her hints of what to expect.
Capturing the southern lights is the result of a culmination of good intel, an understanding of weather and sometimes, according to Crowther, a good gut instinct.
While location-spotting ahead of her next attempt, Crowther had been visiting Lake Ellesmere and discovered a rusted, burned ute abandoned on the side of the road.
“I’d never seen it there before, I thought it would make the perfect foreground.”
The media had reported a solar flare would be hitting New Zealand a month ago but nothing came to fruition. However, Crowther’s observations of data on Sunday revealed signs of hope.
“It showed a new moon coming down and it was a clear night, it looked really promising,” she said.
“I decided to leave home just before 6pm and hoped to get there just before the sun went down, I was getting notifications and everything met up. In my mind, I thought this would be perfect.”
Her mind proved her right.
Crowther’s observations of data on Sunday revealed signs of hope of capturing the solar storm. Photo / Natalie Crowther
Arriving at her shooting spot, Crowther watched the sunset and saw a small haze of pink, further cementing her belief her run of bad luck would finally be broken.
The sun disappeared from view, twilight arrived and for the following two hours, the photographer witnessed “weird fog curtains” and small verticle beams of pink light - constantly changing in front of her.
Crowther pointed her Canon60 and 40mm lens towards the ute and started clicking.
“I haven’t been out photographing for a while as I’ve had lots of things going on, so it’s about charging batteries for me,” she said.
“The first time I saw it was when I was 18 years old, now everyone is out taking photos of it. People were on the hill trying to capture it - but not knowing what direction to look.”
Christchurch can prove a tricky city to capture the lights from, particularly during autumn as grey cloud becomes a prevalent mask for the lights to hide behind.
But it’s a night that will last long in the memory of the accomplished photographer whose hobby produced a wonderful moment of achievement.
“It’s just a matter of timing and when you come out, you go ‘yes, all perfect’.”
While Crowther was winning in Christchurch, members of theAurora Australis (NZ) Facebook page were showing off their cunning captures as the evening sky turned a purple and pink hue.
The Southern Lights from the top of the Crown Range, looking over Queenstown. Photo / George Heard
The lights were spotted all over the country - from the Bay of Plenty, Hawke’s Bay and Wellington, to the south in Cromwell, Twizel, and Queenstown.
Jonathan Usher captured the light display in Wellington and said the Aurora Australis was “strongly visible.
“The beams of light were clearly visible to the naked eye, though the camera was also able to capture the colour of the aurora,” Usher said.
Hauraki Gulf weather reported a significant G4 level geomagnetic storm had been under way.
As explained by astronomer and Otago Museum director Dr Ian Griffin last month during another stunning display, solar storms are caused by magnetically driven explosions on the sun that fire material at high speed away from the sun.
“That sounds terribly complicated, but what it is is basically the sun fires material occasionally towards Earth,” he told the Otago Daily Times.
“And we’ve had two of those ejections in the last two days.”
Jonathan Usher captured the light display in Wellington and said the Aurora Australis was “strongly visible”. Photo / Jonathan Usher
Both were travelling between the sun and the Earth at about 800km per second.
When that material hits the Earth’s magnetic field it starts to spiral around it, he said.
When energetically charged particles travelling along the Earth’s magnetic field lines strike the upper atmosphere, the Southern (and Northern) Lights can be observed around the magnetic poles.
These powerful electrons produce light when they strike atmospheric gases.
The phenomenon is known as the Aurora Borealis in the Northern Hemisphere and as Aurora Australis down under.
