Southern lights: Amazing pink aurora seen in skies above New Zealand

Strange pink Aurora in the Southern Hemisphere. Things are getting weird, ATS but I thin this is only the beginning.

A spectacular aurora australis, or southern lights — the southern hemisphere’s version of the northern lights — lit up the skies above New Zealand on Tuesday, as stargazers were treated to a dazzling bright-pink-and-green light show.

Several local photographers managed to capture incredible images. One of them, Paul Le Comte, a 46-year-old from Dunedin, New Zealand, captured the scene above from the Otago Peninsula in Dunedin shortly after 2 a.m. local time.

“The display was so massive that my widest angle lens couldn’t fit it all in,” Le Comte told Yahoo News. “[It looked like] the whole southern hemisphere was on fire.”

Are we starting to see signs of impending doom or am I just being paranoid? What says ATS?

news.yahoo.com...

a reply to: lostbook

Its all nice and pretty until the grids go down.

It may be the end. It likely is not.
If this is what the end looks like, then I say bring it on.
It is beautiful.

a reply to: lostbook

Not at all weird. Might just be from the big solar flares we've had recently.

There's supposed to be a bunch in the north here as well, but I guess I'm not in the right place to see them. The sky is amazingly clear though, it's almost like more stars were added.
I'm well away from the city, but I usually can't see so many stars even on clear nights.

Quite the solar storm to have both north and south lighting up.

Yeah, there's a major solar storm winding down right now. Michigan was supposed to be able to see them tonight ok outside bigger cities, but it seems the rural areas got the treat. My kids stayed up til 1am with their noses plastered to the window hoping to see the "painted sky". Needless to say, they went to bed very disappointed.

SpaceWeather's gallery is full of gorgeous shots, plenty from New Zealand in there.
This one from NZ is particularly pretty, IMO:

spaceweathergallery.com...

In the link it says
Pink auroras are relatively common in New Zealand, Le Comte added, “but not this intense.”

So different, but same same.

a reply to: lostbook

an effect of sky spraying perhaps?

From what i remember the pink colour is from high energy auroras and the green is reletively low energy

Wasn't it the northern hemispere that had the storm?
Kp 8?

So the southern is a reaction to the northern storm?

originally posted by: UKWO1Phot
Wasn't it the northern hemispere that had the storm?
Kp 8?

So the southern is a reaction to the northern storm?

Good question, someone more knowledgable should answer that.

We had massive auroras here in Estonia yesterday night (17. march). We have them here sometimes, but mostly too week to see with naked eye. Only photographers can get great pictures. But yesterday was amazing! The wholse sky was full of them, for hours, mostly withish for naked eye, but massive and moving all over the sky from north to south. I have never seen anything like it, it was really amazing. Kp was almost 9 at times.
Even experienced aurora photographers said that they have never seen it this massive.

Interesting. I don´t think it´s the end, but it´s quite unexpected activity from sun. Or our magnetic field is weekening more?