I received a few questions in the comments of my weekend posts about the Southern Lights and Citizen Science projects and thought I’d take the opportunity to write a bit about them in a post.
The Southern Aurora or Aurora Australis
These are the southern hemispheres equivalent of the Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis. The Auroras are concentrated in a ring around the north or south poles. When there is solar storm the high energy particles interact with our atmosphere leading to the coloured lights around the polar area. There’s a great video here explaining the process. The colours are generally visible if you are closer to the poles because the Aurora is overhead and more intense. As you move further from the poles the lights are on the horizon and are generally seen as shades of grey. If there is a high intensity storm there’s more colour. During last year’s storm the colour was visible to the naked eye in Melbourne. Our friends saw that one and said they saw the colours, they also sent me a photo that they took. When you can see the lights but not the colours with the naked eye, a camera will generally be able to capture the colours.
For context Melbourne is at the same latitude as Mykonos in Greece or San Francisco in the US, so not very close to the equator, which is why seeing the Aurora in Melbourne is an unusual occurrence. We are lucky though that we have a view south over the sea so don’t get a lot of light pollution where we need to be looking.
Citizen Science Projects
I posted about joining the Australian Pollinator Count which is a citizen science project that has been running since 2022. Each year people around Australia count pollinators. I’ve participated once before, but this is the first year I’ve had to pass a test to have my results included in the official data. Last week was also FrogID week, another Australian citizen science project where participants record frogs with a special app to help monitor frog populations. Willam Yalukit Nature Reserve near us also does monthly bird surveys which I plan to do the next time it is on at a time I’m available.
If you are interested in citizen science it’s worth googling to see if anything is on in your area. NASA has a heap of citizen science projects.
Comments
19 responses to “Some Recent questions”
Apparently, the Southern Aurora would have been visible from the Western Cape too, if we had prepared ourselves properly (go to a place outside of Cape Town, where there are clear, dark skies with minimal light pollution and an unobstructed view).
Unfortunately, I didn’t think of it – but for the next solar storm we’ll be ready!
It probably would have been, but it is an effort to get yourself somewhere to see it on the off chance it might occur.
It’s so funny, I have never once thought that there would be a Southern Aurora – of course, we know about the Northern one here, and I’ve even seen it, but it never occurred to me there would be one in the southern hemisphere. Of course! Silly me!
There’s less landmass around the poles in the south, so probably less opportunity to see the really spectacular ones like you see in the Arctic—unless you go to Antarctica which I have no plans to do.
That’s so cool that you are participating in the Pollinator Count project–I’ve never thought to look for a Citizen Science Projects, but I think I’ll check out the link you shared 🙂
It can be fun for kids, too.
I wonder if there’s such a thing as Citizen Sciences projects in the US? I’m assuming there isn’t, but I could be very wrong- I’ll have to look into it.
Like Nicole, I’ve never heard of Southern Aurora. That photo is amazing!
The NASA link is mainly US based citizen science.
So interesting. Thanks for explaining. I’m cracking up at the frog population one. If only I could’ve been recruited to be involved with this when I was a kid. I loved catching frogs – they didn’t live in abundance in my neighborhood or anything, but at a picnic at a forest preserve or something – I was all about it.
You only had to record the frogs sound, you didn’t even need to see them so it would have been super easy.
The citizen science projects sound really fun! Thanks for sharing the link. Love the photo of your aurora — stunning colors.
I wish that photo was mine.
I hadn’t thought about the possibility of a southern aurora, but I’ll say my understanding of such things is very paltry! It’s something my husband is very very into. We were able to see the northern lights a week ago but I was in bed trying to sleep and missed it. I should have gotten up and walked with Phil – had I known he was going, I would have joined him but he made a spur-of-the-moment decision after I had retired for the evening.
That’s probably the hardest part for us – staying up late enough to see them.
Thanks for sharing this extra info. I am so intrigued by the citizen science project. It never occurred to me that there were projects that would include citizens in data collection. Data collection usually adheres to pretty strict standards, so I can how that test you had to do beforehand makes sense.
I was a complete novice at identifying bugs. I mean, I could do European honey bees and ladybirds, but I learnt what to look for to distinguish bees from wasps and flies, so that was interesting. You needed to be able to sort the pollinators into 12 categories, so not all the way down to a species identification for every bug.
Beautiful pictures! We were in Juneau a few years ago, out looking at stars one night (less light pollution than where we are) and someone showed up with a camera and said the Auroras would be there in about an hour and a half or so. The moon was full, so our star gazing was better than here but not as great as I would have liked. We considered staying, but my SIL said ‘I’m happy to stay as long as you like, but just so you know, usually here it’s more like, “oh, is that green? Maybe a bit of green?”’ So we didn’t stay, we were tired. I would love to see a really spectacular one, of course, but who wouldn’t? It seems like cameras pick it up much better than the naked eye.
I think last year and this year has been prime viewing because the sun is in an active cycle, I’m not going to give up on looking though.
i have heard about Southern Aurora first on your blog last year. Like Nicole I never spend a second thinking that this would – obviously – also be a phenomenon at the souther hemisphere.