On Thursday, Colm Doyle received a notification from the Southern Hemisphere Aurora Facebook group that there was a likely chance for light aurora activity during the night.
An amateur photographer and Albany resident, Mr Doyle drove 10 minutes to his local beach on the south coast of Western Australia.
Setting up his camera gear on the steep steps at Sandpatch Beach, Mr Doyle was able to capture a magnificent photo of the aurora australis.
Not visible to the naked eye, it was only when Mr Doyle set his camera exposure to 30 seconds that he was able to snap the red luminescence in the night sky.
"It was the very first time I had tried to take a photo of the aurora," Mr Doyle said.
After following a couple of Aurora Australis Facebook pages for the past three years, Mr Doyle took an interest in the phenomenon.
"Seeing that every now and then an opportunity does arise, taking a photo seemed to be quite rare," he said.
"When I saw there was activity I thought I better get out there because there were no clouds in the sky, which is not always common for the Great Southern."
The aurora australis occurs when high-energy-charged particles from the sun, such as electrons, enter the Earth's atmosphere.
The ability to view or capture the aurora australis is largely dependent on the solar cycle, which can vary in length from as little as nine to almost 14 years.
It's when the cycle has entered a solar maximum, usually halfway through, that the aurora australis is most likely to be seen.
"You get lots of sunspots, a lot more radiation, a lot more solar wind coming off the sun," Perth Observatory's Matthew Woods said.
He describes the lights as an interaction between radiation and plasma from the sun and the earth's atmosphere.
Massive solar flares often blast streams of charged particles into the solar wind and outwards towards Earth. These particles are directed by the magnetic field of the Earth where they collide with atoms in the atmosphere.
According to the Bureau of Meteorology, it is these collisions that generate the aurora, most commonly visible at high north or south latitudes.
"When you see red, it's oxygen particles quite high up in the atmosphere and when you see the green colour oxygen quite low in the atmosphere," Mr Woods said.
For those wanting to catch a glimpse of the lights, Mr Woods suggests keeping an eye on the KP rating, which is a measure of geomagnetic activity in the Earth's atmosphere.
"Anything around about 4 or 5 [on the KP rating], you should definitely be able to at least see and take photos."
