Transcript of AE 1294 - The Goss: Australia Just Had the Best Aurora in 500 Years!

G'day, you mob! Pete here, and this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news weather locally Down Under here in Australia or non-locally overseas in other parts of the world, okay.

And we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right. If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Goss. So these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English, and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English, so it is particularly good to improve your listening skills.

In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the Academy membership at AussieEnglish.com.au where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads, and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time. Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time. Keep practising and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit. I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it.

Dad.

Pete!

I wonder how many episodes start with that.

Dad.

Dad. Pete. Pete.

I always think it's unique. And then I'm like, no, I did it every single time.

Yeah, well, it's unique, but repeated.

Yeah. Repeat.

Yeah. Repeat.

It's re-peat, re-peat! So the aurora!

Yeah.

How epic was that?

It was amazing.

Did that blow your mind? Because I remember..

It blew my mind because I've photographed the aurora a few times and I've seen it before. But where you actually have to go and photograph it with a long exposure.

What for?

Yeah. To get..

We were doing a long exposure when we were there.

Yeah. But but the long exposure, you know, just to get a vague, purpley glow in the sky.

The very top of it.

Yeah.

Yeah. Because I guess..

But this one..

Over the last decade or so, I know you would tell me every now and then I'm going to go out early in the morning to photograph the aurora. And you'd come back with photos that would be long exposure and have a bit of the red hue on the horizon. But, um, this most recent one just blew the, the fucking roof off, right? Like, it was just absolutely ridiculous. And it was worldwide. That's again, we were previously talking about these shared events being just so epic, right?

Yeah.

Um, whether it was TV shows all coming out at once or Pokemon Go, but the Aurora was one of these interesting sort of moments in the zeitgeist that happened on social media all simultaneously. And I think..

Well, the thing is that it it got reported on social media, but it happened.

Yeah.

It's a natural event that everybody could see.

Well, I could see it from my front door!

I know!

I remember going on..

.. a back deck and go, Look at that!

Well, I remember going out there and holding my phone up, and these people walking past with their dog being like, What the fuck is this?

I know.

And I was like, Guys, guys, guys, come here. Come here. Come here. Have a look at this. The aurora. You can see it above this person's house. Despite the street lights. Despite the light pollution from our suburb. It's right there. You can see it with your naked eye.

I know.

How effed up is that?

It was amazing.

And they were like, Oh. Oh, yeah!

Yeah.

But yeah. So were you initially expecting for it to be as intense and spectacular as it was, or were you just thinking it's another event with the Aurora?

Look, because I'm on one of the Aurora watch mailing lists. Um, so you get notification from the Bureau of Meteorology that just says, you know, we're expecting, you know, there has been an event on the surface of the sun.

In 18 hours.

So, you know, in the next 24 hours, you are likely to be able to see at high latitudes blah blah blah.

Mhm.

Um, and you get those on average once a month ish, sometimes nothing for six months, sometimes 3 or 4 in a month.

Really? Okay. So it's quite frequent but then not as..

Yeah, and then 90% of the time you get nothing.

Okay. So you go out there and go out during the day or you missed it.

Yeah, you don't see anything.

Yeah.

Um, this one though, that had been 3 or 4 days in a row where those Aurora watch things came out. And then the last one came out and said, This one's going to be..

Intense.

Yeah, more spectacular or intense. I can't remember the word they used. It wasn't either of those, but basically what they were saying is, don't miss this. Um, but I hadn't expected anything like what we got. You know that what we got is what you get at 70 degrees north or south.

You reckon?

Once every few years. Yeah, but. But they only get green. We got reds and purples and green and, yeah, it was ridiculous.

You wonder what it would have been like at the poles. I imagine it would have just been green, but intense.

Yeah.

But they wouldn't have had that spectral.

No.

Variation, across the colours, as a result of being further away from the poles.

Yeah.

And but yeah. So this article, this is on Space.com and it was, We may have just witnessed some of the strongest auroras in 500 years. And that blew my mind. I didn't realise like I thought, oh, okay, we've got a good one. But, um.

Well, in my 66 years, that's the only time that I've ever been able to see it, other than going this vague pinky glow on the horizon. Yeah, I think with the naked eye, I think whereas this one we were, you know, we were down at the beach together, standing there going, Holy shit. And it was the entire southern sky.

Yeah.

It wasn't just a little bit of glow and, you know, ten degree angle of it. It was the entire southern sky.

It was pretty mind blowing. I'm glad. Like, so with the story was that. Yeah, I think I just saw online and I was like, oh fuck it, I'll go down to Barwon Heads and I'll send dad a text because I'm sure he's going to go out and photography, do some photography or try and photograph it. Um, and you were in Melbourne, weren't you? Driving back from..

Coming home. Yeah.

And then I said, oh, well, just send me a text. When are you going to go down? And I'll go down and check it out.

I said, yeah, I'm going to, I can I was driving along down the back of, out of the back of Geelong going, I can see it from here.

Yeah.

And that's when I just called you..

And said, go..

Hey Siri, call Pete. And-.

Careful what you say.

Yeah, exactly. It just popped up.

Yeah, exactly. Who doesn't have a phone on them. I am.

Good.

Um, and I, um. And I just said, yeah, I'm going there, turn up.

And it was insane, right? Like..

It was.

As soon as you showed up, it was really the thing for me that it was kind of a letdown, but impressive at the same time because I was totally. You see all these photos of the Aurora online, and you forget that they're long exposure. So you just assume you're going to look at the sky and it's going to be bright green and red, you know, at least from the ones that we've seen. Um, and it's not that. But this time when we went or at least when I went, it's the first and only time I've ever seen it. But you could definitely see this, this very obvious glow.

And movement.

And movement. Yeah. It was really weird. Just I imagine it's what it's like being on acid, right? To some degree where you're watching..

How would you know?

The sky is just changing the light intensity. And you could see the arms of the aurora coming out and everything in your eyes. But it was pretty faint. But then the funny thing was, you would hold your camera up, and I don't know if there was like multiple second delay on just you having the camera open and looking at the sky. But as soon as you hold the camera up on your phone, you could see what it would look like.

Yeah.

And it was just intense as. And there were a whole bunch. I couldn't believe the quality of the photos I was getting through my, um, my phone camera.

Good.

Now, despite it being like a ten, 3 to 10 second exposure each time. But it was just ridiculous. But yeah, it was really cool watching. And you could see the intensity change, right? It was dull at first, well, dull compared to what it became. And then it really intensified and then sort of got dull again, dull off.

And then it intensified a little bit more later, but not to the level it was when you were there.

Yeah, but it was mind blowing. Yeah. Just looking, because we went down to Barwon Heads 13th beach Beach, which is effectively looking south to Tasmania, across the bay, pretty much across the bay, across the Bass Strait.

Strait. Yeah.

Um, and so there's nothing impeding your view. You can just look out to the ocean. And it was just taking up the entire sky.

Yeah, it was.

Across in front of us.

Yeah. It's ridiculous.

Yeah. So, yeah, that was, um. That was funny, and I didn't. I didn't really appreciate how much this was happening everywhere in the world. I remember posting a photo on Instagram and then having someone, a friend who's followed me for a long time, um, messaging me, and she was like, I'm in far north Queensland and I can see the red on the horizon.

Yeah.

Like, she sent me a photo and she's like, Is that the Aurora? And I'm like, It looks like it to me. Like it's the top of the red part. It's the same colour as the one that I'm seeing. You can't see the intensity of it like the whole thing. But you can see the red. And she's like, I'm like in, you know, wherever it was, it was above Brisbane.

Yeah.

And she's like, I can see it.

And she's like..

Well, I was saying, I was saying that it was, um, up to 26 degrees latitude, which is near the tropics. Like the tropics are 23 degrees.

Yeah.

Thereabouts. Um.

Ridiculous.

That's crazy. Yeah.

Yeah. So it was obviously it would be so interesting. I don't know, I'll have to look online if there's any um, International Space Station photos of like just the spread. Because in my mind I see it as normally, you know, you see it above the poles as green, but it must have spread all around the top way further along than normal. But apparently it was due to these, um, what are they called again? C M.

Coronal mass ejections. Coronal- it's what causes them.

CMEs, right.

And the corona is the like..

A crown.

To use a metaphor, it's the skin of the sun. It's the right outer part. And a mass ejection is just effectively it's a storm on the surface..

Under these weird like rings that appear and then explode out?

And it just blows out.

Yeah.

Um, yeah. Gases and charged particles. Um, and takes 18 to 24 hours to travel the 150,000,000km to Earth.

Yeah.

Um, and those charged particles in there excite the particularly gases, but mostly oxygen and nitrogen hence the different colours to different gases in the Earth's atmosphere, but they do it because of the way that it's hitting and transferring through the atmosphere. It is most obvious at the poles.

Yeah.

Um, and..

Well that's the magnetic field, right? It's more intense at the poles than it is around the other sides. But obviously it was so strong that it was seen much further..

Into the tropics.

Yeah.

Well, subtropics.

It was funny too. I was reading this article from Space.com and again, this is titled, um, We may have had we may have just witnessed some of the strongest auroras in 500 years.

Yeah.

Published on May the 21st. And they were saying it was funny because it hit Mars, I think, a week later.

Yeah.

As a result. And, um, it would be interesting again to see photos from Mars because the atmosphere in Mars looks different during sunset. And everything, like the light moves through the atmosphere differently because it's a different thickness and..

Thinner atmosphere and different composition.

Yeah. Yeah.

Almost no oxygen.

Yeah. It is one of those things. You wonder what the aurora looks like on different planets. That has any of those planets has to have an active. Um, well, don't they have to have just an active? Um. Well, yeah. Atmosphere, but active magnetic field.

It's the atmosphere as much as anything else. Because you've got to excite gases.

The particles.

Yeah. Gas particles.

A little flight.

Yeah.

Or to refract it. Yeah. Anyway. Really cool. But I had no idea too, that it was the most intense in 500 years.

Yeah, well..

That really hit home.

Well, 500 is the guessing..

But that's effectively them saying, well, since records..

You're never going to see it again!

Yeah, exactly. So did that make you happy that you went out and saw it that night?

Oh yeah. Yeah. But you could see it tomorrow. You know, there could be another equivalent thing. It's just they, they happen on average over, you know. Well, whatever people are extrapolating it to over 4.5 billion years, they happen about once every 500 years.

Well, you wonder at that level. You wonder how it must happen on almost a daily basis on the sun..

Oh, of course.

The angle that it's shot out into space. Just completely misses us.

But but, well, it probably won't miss so much. But it's also that the intensity of it is so little that it's the excitation of particles in the Earth's atmosphere is just not going to be visible. So yeah.

So yeah.

It was cool.

Pretty cool, pretty cool.

Sorry you guys missed it if you did.

I know and sorry for spamming you guys. If you were sick of seeing all these photos from pretty much everyone everywhere about it online at the time. Anyway, thanks for joining us guys, and we'll see you next time.

See you!