Aurora Borealis (Photo : Reuters)
Aurora Australis, one of the space weather phenomena that is thought to be visible from the Earth's southern reaches only, has appeared over Australia due to a severe geomagnetic storm, Wednesday.
The lights often appear in the skies of Tasmania and New Zealand, however, it extended across two of Australia's mainland around 1 a.m.
Professor Fred Menk, University of Newcastle's Center for Space Physics' space weather expert, said that the phenomenon was a nightly occurrence across the Antarctic, but rarer in the North.
There were lucky citizens to have witnessed the event and flocked social networking sites to document it. Also popular by the name Southern Lights, it painted the black sky with its orb-like spectrum of pink, purple, and green shades.
A man from the New South Wales was able to record the sight from his backyard and brought the video of the stunning visual phenomenon online with his narration that said, "This is insane... oh my God, look at that."
The event was also seen in the Northern Hemisphere across Europe and United States, where it is called "Aurora Borealis".
Both phenomena were ignited by a gigantic, strong storm which released charged solar particles all over Earth, according to the Bureau of Meteorology of Australia.
"These collisions cause the neutral atoms to fluoresce, emitting light at many different wavelengths," ABC News reported.
"The most common aurora colors are red and green, caused by the fluorescence of oxygen atoms, while nitrogen atoms can throw bluish-purple lights into the mix," he added.
