Underberg resident records amazing celestial spectacle
An amazing display of the southern lights, or “Aurora Australis” as it is known in the southern hemisphere, was visible in the country over the weekend.
According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Space Weather Prediction Centre (SWPC), who issued a solar storm warning for the category G5 event, this is the strongest geomagnetic storm to hit earth in 20 years.
Madie Botha, who was at Silver Streams Cottages outside Underberg in the Southern Drakensberg at the time, was able to see the lights firsthand and capture the mesmerising event on camera.
Botha said that her interests were intrigued when she saw a post on Facebook about the Aurora lights.
“I saw on Facebook on one of the weather groups that we might see the Aurora Australis between 3 am and 4 am on [Saturday],” said Botha.
Botha added that she is not a professional photographer but just takes “for fun”. She said that she just “could not hold herself back”and had to capture the beauty of the sky.
“I did not know what it was, but I was curious. I decided to set my alarm for 3 am that morning. When I walked outside and saw the reddish sky; I was in awe. I had my camera close by, so I decided to take a few pictures. When I took the first photo, I thought that could not be. It was so special. I took a few more photos and I just could not believe what I was seeing,” she said.
Botha said that she later did her research and found out what the lights were and where they came from.
She said that she was fortunate to have been one of the people who were able to see these lights as it was a rare sight.
“I stayed outside until just after 4 am. I was so glad I set my alarm because what I experienced, I still cannot describe it in words. Later in the day when I did my research and found out that they are the Aurora Australis southern lights and this was the first time they appeared in the past 20 years, I felt it was a real honour to witness it,” said Botha.
Auroras lit up skies across swaths of the planet for the second night in a row on Saturday, after already dazzling Earthlings from the United States to Tasmania to the Bahamas the day before. The powerful solar storm triggered spectacular celestial shows usually confined to the far northern or southern reaches of the planet. The first of several coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — expulsions of plasma and magnetic fields from the Sun — came on Friday afternoon, according to SWPC.
It was later upgraded to an “extreme” geomagnetic storm — the first since the “Halloween Storms” of October 2003 that caused blackouts in Sweden and damaged power infrastructure in South Africa. No major disruptions to power or communications networks appear to have been reported this time around, despite initial worries from authorities.