Aurora australis over Dunedin, tonight

A natural light display caused by charged particles from the sun colliding with gases in Earth's upper atmosphere. The collisions release energy as glowing light, usually green, pink or red, typically 100 to 300km up.

Check tonight's verdict card above. It's a straight Go/No-Go call built from real-time Kaus, Bz, cloud cover and darkness for your location, updated every 5 minutes.

Face a dark, south-facing horizon, ideally between 10pm and 2am, and check tonight's live verdict for your location so you're not heading out on a quiet night.

Any time it's fully dark, but activity is statistically strongest around local magnetic midnight, roughly 10pm to 2am, when your location rotates into the part of Earth's magnetic field most disturbed by the solar wind. Check tonight's verdict card above for your location's exact dark-sky window.

As a rough guide: Tasmania can pick up faint displays from around Kp 5, Victoria and South Australia usually need Kp 6 to 7, and the mainland further north needs an extreme Kp 8 or 9 storm. We track the Kaus index alongside Kp, a scale tuned for southern-hemisphere visibility that often gives an earlier read on your actual chances than Kp alone.

They're roughly matched. The South Island sits further south than any Australian state, and Stewart Island further still, making it one of the most reliable free viewing spots covered on this site.

Rarely, Queenstown sits well north of the best viewing. Dunedin's Otago Peninsula, the Catlins, or Stewart Island give a much darker, more reliably south-facing horizon.