Aurora Australis Cams: Tasmania & New Zealand

Look south, and wait for a storm

The southern auroral oval circles the south geomagnetic pole, which lies off the Antarctic coast south of Australia. Tasmania and New Zealand’s South Island are the inhabited land closest to it, but they are still well north of the oval on a quiet night, so a display needs a geomagnetic storm. The same Kp index applies as in the north:

Tasmania does better than its latitude suggests, because the south geomagnetic pole leans toward Australia: Hobart at 43°S has about the same geomagnetic latitude as Te Anau at 45°S, and only Stewart Island is clearly better placed. On most storm nights the aurora australis is a glow and pillars low in the south, often more obvious to a camera than to the eye. In the biggest storms of 2024 it rose high over both islands and was seen from the Australian mainland and New Zealand’s North Island.

The cameras

• Beaumaris on Tasmania’s north-east coast is a 4K weather camera looking east by south over the Tasman Sea: a dark ocean horizon on the right side of the sky.
• Wellington Park is the view from kunanyi / Mount Wellington above Hobart, and Cradle Mountain is in the Tasmanian highlands. Both are snapshot cameras that refresh every few minutes.
• Lake Te Anau is live video from the edge of Fiordland, and the Kepler Track camera is nearby. Southland is the best-placed region of mainland New Zealand.
• Lake Pukaki and Twizel are in the Mackenzie Basin, inside the Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve, one of the darkest inhabited skies in the world.
• Kina, near Nelson at the top of the South Island, is a 4K sky camera pointed due south with a slow night shutter for colour. At 41°S it needs a strong storm, but when one comes it has a clean southern view.

The Australian Antarctic Division’s station webcams at Mawson, Davis and Casey often show aurora in the southern winter, but their terms allow only personal, non-commercial use, so they are not embedded here.

When to watch

Season: the southern lights can appear in any month, but the long nights from April to September give the most dark hours, and the March and September equinoxes bring the most geomagnetic activity. In December the nights are short: at Te Anau the sun is not 12° below the horizon until after 23:00.

Time of night: from full dark to about 02:00 local time is the most active stretch, but in a storm the display follows the storm’s timing, not the clock. Check the storm banner and the cameras rather than waiting for midnight.

Where to watch in person

In Tasmania, anywhere with a clear view south over water: South Arm and Opossum Bay, Goats Bluff, the beaches of Bruny Island, or Cockle Creek at the end of the road. In palawa kani, the language of Tasmanian Aboriginal people, the aurora is nuyina, the name given to Australia’s Antarctic icebreaker. In New Zealand, where it is Tahunui-a-rangi in te reo Māori, the favourites are Stewart Island / Rakiura, a Dark Sky Sanctuary; Curio Bay and the Catlins coast; the Otago Peninsula above Dunedin; and the Mackenzie Basin around Lake Tekapo, where Mount John Observatory runs night tours.

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology Space Weather Services issues aurora alerts and watches for the region, and the cloud figure on each camera above is the current model value for that spot. Southerly fronts bring both cloud and clearances; the gap behind one is often the night.