Speaker 1: Did you get a glimpse of the Aurora Australis last night?
Speaker 1: Matt Woods from the per Observatory went on a trek
Speaker 1: last night and got some absolutely amazing photos. Could I Matt?
Speaker 2: Good to talk to you, Hey, Simon, how are you
Speaker 2: doing good?
Speaker 1: Mate? Where did you end up having to get to
Speaker 1: to get those photos?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I traveled out to the central Wheat Belt, so
Speaker 2: I went to Boyd and Rock near Brookton. I had
Speaker 2: thought about going to Mount Dale and testing my SUV's
Speaker 2: ability to climb a mountain, but it was a little
Speaker 2: bit too close to the cloudy weather, so I just
Speaker 2: continued on and had a little bit of a ten
Speaker 2: minute track up to the rock, and thankfully it was
Speaker 2: a really nice view. You could just make it out
Speaker 2: as a grayish, pinkish haze on the southeast corner, but
Speaker 2: as soon as I started taking the photos you could
Speaker 2: clearly see it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the thing, isn't it? And there was some
Speaker 1: cloud cover metro last night, so it was always going
Speaker 1: to be tricky. So the further un east, the more
Speaker 1: guy you got. That's the thing, isn't it matter? Often
Speaker 1: to the naked eye, as you say, just looks like
Speaker 1: a like a bit of a bit hazy, but often
Speaker 1: a camera lens really puts in focus, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was looking really promising like it could possibly
Speaker 2: be something like say August last year, where if you
Speaker 2: were down like I was down at Ireland Point Reserve
Speaker 2: just twenty minutes south of Mandra and you could clearly
Speaker 2: see it with your own eyes. We weren't fully you know,
Speaker 2: we weren't expecting it to be anything like May or October.
Speaker 2: Where it was. It didn't matter where you were, even
Speaker 2: in the suburbs, you could still see that red. But
Speaker 2: it just unfortunately there's the polarity just we needed it
Speaker 2: to be a negative polarity, and it was a positive.
Speaker 2: So you know, in terms of when the storm hitting
Speaker 2: the earth, it's like an off switch if it's mainly
Speaker 2: a positive polarity for the storm. And so it just
Speaker 2: was really doing things. So you did need to be
Speaker 2: out out of the city to actually be able to
Speaker 2: see it any great detail, particularly with the camera.
Speaker 1: Tell me what that means that what's the polarity argument.
Speaker 2: So there's an embedded in the solar storm. There is
Speaker 2: an up down magnetic field direction and we call it
Speaker 2: BZ and we track that, and it's one of the
Speaker 2: most important tools we use to see whether it's worth
Speaker 2: actually going out. So a negative BZ meaning south, is
Speaker 2: more like an on switch for the aurora, where a
Speaker 2: positive is like an off switch. So it's just not
Speaker 2: the atmosphere wasn't charging up. So what happens is you
Speaker 2: had a solar storm sent from the Sun about eight
Speaker 2: am on the thirty first of May our time, and
Speaker 2: it took about a day and a half to get here.
Speaker 2: So the Earth is also has a strong magnetic field
Speaker 2: that protects us. And so if anyone's ever done that
Speaker 2: high school experiment where you get the bar magnet and
Speaker 2: you dip the iron, you get pour iron filings over it,
Speaker 2: you see the magnetic field lines. Yep, that's what's protecting us.
Speaker 2: So that our magnetic field pushes that solar particles around,
Speaker 2: deflex it, but some of it comes back along the
Speaker 2: magnetic field lines and then hits the atmosphere and the
Speaker 2: actual solar particles interacting with the oxygen and nitrogen particles
Speaker 2: causes those particles to glow like a neon sign. And
Speaker 2: that's what we're seeing, all right.
Speaker 1: And madam just looking while I'm talking to just looking
Speaker 1: at some of the reports around Australia and New South Wales,
Speaker 1: Tazzy over here in Wa. It was quite quite the
Speaker 1: show last night, wasn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, particularly on the East Coast. It hit here about
Speaker 2: mid afternoon, so it was perfect timing for New Zealand
Speaker 2: and for the East Coast, and that initial brunt was
Speaker 2: actually quite strong, so you get a lot a lot
Speaker 2: of streaks in the images coming from on the from
Speaker 2: New Zealand, then from the East Coast, so by the
Speaker 2: time it got here it was a little bit dull.
Speaker 2: But hey, you know you're not I'm not complaining. I
Speaker 2: drove an hour and a half hours to drive and
Speaker 2: I was sick with a cold and I managed to
Speaker 2: get something, so it would have been a hell of
Speaker 2: a sad trip back if I didn't get well.
Speaker 1: Mate, Hey, matare they your private photos?
Speaker 2: Are they?
Speaker 1: Or there's the observatory own them?
Speaker 2: So they're my photos that I share them with the
Speaker 2: observatory because I took it with the observatory camera.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I just wondered if we can both Yeah,
Speaker 1: I might see if we can let our just listen
Speaker 1: to scene, if that's okay. I might see if our
Speaker 1: people can talk to your people on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's one of those things that you know,
Speaker 2: you guys, people can go out and see this themselves.
Speaker 2: There's really good apps out there where you can keep
Speaker 2: an eye like the Glendale Aurora app is really good
Speaker 2: to look at, especially if you want to learn this.
Speaker 2: You know it will tell you. It has a little
Speaker 2: help functions each on each of the little graphs, but
Speaker 2: you can keep an eye on like this. Really good
Speaker 2: Facebook pages as well. There's like the Aurora Australa's West
Speaker 2: Australia page which you can join. Also pac Man Space
Speaker 2: where there's really good I always just double check my
Speaker 2: information as well as checking of course, there's the bombs
Speaker 2: Aurora page and also Noah in America will give you
Speaker 2: a really good data as well. And it's one of
Speaker 2: those things it's just persistence. You just got to go
Speaker 2: out and you will get rewarded in the end. I
Speaker 2: remember the October when I went out five nights in
Speaker 2: a row because the we just kept on being hit
Speaker 2: by a solar storm. But unfortunately that polarity just was
Speaker 2: not the right way and it was the sixth day
Speaker 2: where I wasn't actually going to be hanging around. I
Speaker 2: was late at work doing reports and it just happened
Speaker 2: to just change, and all of a sudden we got
Speaker 2: an absolutely magical display that you know I'll never forget.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, mat, good to talk to you as always,
Speaker 1: Thanks for chatting to our listeners, and I'll put you
Speaker 1: back to Ann and Linz and see if we can
Speaker 1: grab a version or at least grab a link to
Speaker 1: where people can go and see your shots from last night.
Speaker 1: Thanks mate, Yeah, Norris