Aurora australis in New Zealand tonight

Aurora australis follows the same rules as its northern counterpart, just centred on the south magnetic pole rather than the north. The display expands outward from that pole as geomagnetic activity rises, and the Kp index - a 0-9 scale of that activity, updated every three hours - sets how far north it reaches. New Zealand's South Island sits at 48-54°S magnetic latitude, which makes it one of the most accessible places on the planet to see the southern lights: Stewart Island needs only Kp 3 and Invercargill Kp 4, a threshold reached several times a month even in a quiet solar year.

Stewart Island, reached by ferry or short flight from Invercargill, has open south-facing beaches and almost no artificial light. Dunedin and the Otago Peninsula combine a low threshold with city comforts - a dark horizon is a short drive away. Lake Tekapo, inside the Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve, offers some of the darkest skies in the southern hemisphere at a latitude where aurora is genuinely possible, though its higher 56°S threshold means it needs a stronger storm than the far south.

The one habit to unlearn if you are used to chasing the northern lights: look south, not north. Everything else - the Kp scale, the three-hour update cycle, the storm classifications from G1 to G5 - works exactly the same. The season is also reversed from the European aurora calendar: New Zealand's long, dark nights run from roughly May through September, the southern autumn and winter, not the northern hemisphere's October-to-March window.