http://www.stuff.co.nz/science/7286695/Star-Spy-The-black-spot wrote:This display of the southern lights was well visible at least as far north as Christchurch, halfway to the equator from the South Pole, because of a large magnetic storm on the surface of the Sun just a little over a day ago.
It takes the light from the Sun just over eight minutes to get here, but the heavier charged particles that cause the aurorae travel a little slower.
They were blasted away from the Sun directly toward Earth when the magnetic field lines they were following broke apart. When the particles came near to Earth they were captured by our planet’s magnetic field and sleeted down above the poles where they disrupted the gasses in our high atmosphere causing them to glow in their characteristic colours.
You will see what appear like curtains of red and green light blowing in the wind, moving back and forth above the landscape. The red is nitrogen and the green is oxygen, the two main components of the air we breathe.
To see a time-lapse animation, CLICK HERE: Aurora Australis and the Church of the Good Shepherd, Tekapo, New Zealand - 15 July 2012
