Southern hemisphere · live
Perth itself rarely sees anything but the strongest storms, but Albany, three hundred kilometres further south, holds WA's best and most consistent chance.
Written by the AuroraSee team · Brisbane, Australia · Updated 29 July 2026
NOT TONIGHT
Geomagnetic activity is quiet tonight, unlikely to see aurora from here.
Updated just now · refreshes every 5 min
Next 24 hours + 3 days ·
Hourly aurora probability for your location, then the BOM and NOAA forecasts translated out of jargon.
No aurora activity forecast for the next 24 hours at this location, this reflects genuinely quiet conditions right now, not a data outage.
Where to go
Dark, south-facing horizons within reach of the city.
Rugged, dark, south-facing coastline.
Remote and genuinely dark on a clear night.
Open Southern Ocean horizon, far from any town glow.
Where to look
Live status, viewing spots and which way to face the horizon for every aurora region south of the mainland’s middle.
Free web push
A single alert when a real storm starts, not a ping for every wobble in the solar wind.
Learn the sky
Where to look, when to go, and why the aurora sits low on the southern horizon as beams, not overhead curtains.
Read the guide →Every state ranked by how often it sees a display, plus the specific dark-sky spots worth the drive in each.
Read the guide →Phone and camera settings that pull colour out of a grey glow: exposure, ISO, focus at infinity, and framing the beams.
Read the guide →Why northern-hemisphere apps say 0% in Tasmania, and the Australian index chasers actually trust.
Read the guide →Web push when Kaus ≥ 5 or Bz drops below −10 nT sustained. Quiet hours supported. No app, no subscription.
Read the guide →Five aurora forecast apps compared for accuracy, alerts and Southern Hemisphere support, and which ones need no install at all.
Read the guide →FAQ
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.
Rarely, Perth itself needs an extreme Kp 8 or 9 storm. Albany, roughly three hundred kilometres further south, holds WA's best and most consistent chance.
It's simply further south and away from Perth's light pollution. Torndirrup National Park and Peaceful Bay both give a dark, open Southern Ocean horizon.
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