Latest news Magical southern lights over Australia and New Zealand
A spectacular celestial spectacle lit up southern Australia and parts of New Zealand during the night: A particularly strong Aurora Australis, also known as the Southern Lights, colored the sky in shimmering shades of pink, red and green. The natural phenomenon was caused by an exceptionally strong solar storm - which also caused colorful northern lights (Aurora Borealis) in Germany far to the south.
13.11.2025, 08:54
SDA
Photographers mainly used dark locations and long exposure times to make the magical play of colors visible - for example south of Sydney, in Tasmania and in the southwest of Western Australia. Users posted countless photos and videos of the sky glow on the internet.
According to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, the solar storm reached "G4 geomagnetic storm strength" and could even be seen very far north in parts of Queensland. In the UK, the highest warning level G5 was recorded at times - the strongest since records began in 2012.
Spectacle also in New Zealand
The southern lights were also clearly visible in New Zealand, for example around the capital Wellington on the North Island and in Marlborough on the South Island. "A huge spot on the sun, 17 times the diameter of our planet, is throwing material into the atmosphere," reported Radio New Zealand, citing experts.
"Material from the sun travels through space, interacting with the Earth's magnetic field and generating electrical currents," the station quoted astronomer Ian Griffin as saying. "Among other things, these can disrupt the power grid and at the same time cause breathtaking celestial lights." In fact, the solar storm had caused signal disruptions in radio communications and satellite navigation applications in some areas of the world.
Aurora Australis and Aurora Borealis
The aurora borealis is the generic term for the colored light phenomena in the sky that occur when particles from a solar storm collide with the Earth's magnetic field. The Southern Lights (Aurora Australis) is the southern variant of this - it appears over Antarctica and southern Australia, for example, while the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) can be seen at the North Pole and in northern Europe.
