The beautiful Aurora Australis or Southern Lights illuminate the night sky over Ocean Grove in early Autumn 2023. It had been an ambition of mine to capture this astronomical phenomenon for several years and yet, each time I thought I was going to I was thwarted, either by cloudy skies, being in the wrong place at the wrong time or by it simply being daylight when it was at its peak. This particular day I had woken to see various social media posts from around Victoria describing how there had been a magnificent display in the early hours and thought once again that I would be unlucky. However, I kept an eye on the forecast throughout the day and there appeared to be no drop off in activity during daylight hours so I took a chance and headed out as soon as it was dark to somewhere I knew would probably be quiet but would also give me a perfect view of the southern sky. It must be pointed out that seeing such colour with the naked eye in Australia is pretty rare as the Aurora appears as a band of fog like cloud on the horizon but, knowing the camera will see much more I set up and took my first test shot which displayed the beautiful colours clearly. All that was left was to find a composition and keep shooting until the cosmic storm faded away a few hours later.  I was even lucky enough to capture the famous 'picket fence' of light beams which has made me even more determined to photograph more Aurora in the future.
 
Location - Ocean Grove, VIC.
 
Every effort has been made to accurately attempt to represent the colours of the original images. However, due to the many differences in computer screens and certain other variations, the images here should only to be taken as a guide.