Rare Aurora Australis set to illuminate WA skies Friday night

Friday night, if the geomagnetic storm holds, Western Australia's southern sky will fill with colors most people here will never see—violet bleeding into teal, electric green cutting across the dark. The Aurora Australis is coming, and for once, the conditions are nearly perfect.

The Bureau of Meteorology's space weather forecasting centre has flagged a geomagnetic storm strong enough to push the Southern Lights into view across large swaths of Australia, including WA's southern reaches. The mechanism is straightforward: the sun regularly ejects clouds of charged particles into space, and when those clouds reach Earth, they collide with our atmosphere and produce light. Most nights, the effect is too faint to see. But on nights like this one, when the solar wind is strong enough, the glow becomes visible—sometimes just a faint shimmer on the horizon, sometimes vivid enough to paint the entire southern sky.

What makes Friday's display particularly rare is timing. Astronomer Matt Woods points out that the sun operates on an 11-year cycle, and we're now entering the quiet phase. Peak activity occurred around 2024 and 2025, when auroras were far more common. We're at the beginning of the cycle now, which means these displays will be scarce for years. "It does have to be a decent-sized storm for us to be able to see it," Woods explained, and Friday qualifies.

The new moon helps enormously. With no moonlight washing out the sky, the faint atmospheric glow has a fighting chance. Observers will need to wait roughly 75 to 90 minutes after sunset—around 7:45 to 8:00 pm in Perth, given sunset at 6:23 pm—before the sky darkens enough. And they'll need to leave the city. Perth's light pollution is too thick; the aurora won't punch through it. The Wheatbelt offers better odds, but Esperance and Albany, further south, are the genuine sweet spots.

One more thing to know: auroras don't perform on schedule. They arrive in bursts, each lasting 10 to 15 minutes, scattered throughout the night. You might see one at 8 pm or at midnight. You might see several or none at all. "Auroras, meteor showers and comets are all like cats," Woods said. "Only they know what they'll do. Persistence is the key."

For those hoping to photograph the display, the setup is simple but specific. Use night mode on your phone's camera, set the exposure between 10 and 20 seconds, and stabilize the phone against a tripod, rock, or car roof to eliminate blur. Face south. Avoid looking at bright screens while you wait—your eyes need time to adjust to the dark. Bring warm clothes. Bring patience. The sky may reward you, or it may not. Either way, you'll have spent a night looking up, which is rarely wasted time.