When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.The southern lights captured from Brazil on Jan. 19. | Credit: Egon FilterA rare aurora appeared briefly over southern Brazil on Jan. 19 during a powerful geomagnetic storm. Luckily for us, one photographer was at the right place at the right time to capture the fleeting scene.Astrophotographer Egon Filter captured the faint purple-red glow from Cambará do Sul, in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul state, during the peak of the geomagnetic storm. Auroras are typically confined to high latitudes near Earth’s north and south magnetic poles, making sightings in the Southern Hemisphere this far north of Antarctica very rare.AdvertisementAdvertisementFilter had always dreamt of photographing the aurora australis (southern lights) in Brazil, but Rio Grande do Sul state is located between the 27 and 33 degrees south latitude, far outside the usual auroral zone.”For an aurora to be visible at low latitudes, a very violent and exceptional solar storm is necessary,” Filter told Space.com in an email.To Filter’s delight, that condition was met on Jan. 19, when a strong geomagnetic storm struck Earth. He was watching the southern sky when the glow appeared.”It was a fantastic, truly thrilling feeling to check the camera and see that I had captured the image,” Filter continued. “I took a few more pictures and, after a few minutes, it had already disappeared.”How did auroras reach Brazil?The short-lived display occurred inside the South Atlantic Anomaly, a region where Earth’s magnetic field is weaker than elsewhere, according to spaceweather.com. This region is usually associated with suppressed auroral activity, not enhanced displays, and one leading explanation is that the weak and disorganized magnetic fields in the anomaly do a poor job of focusing and accelerating solar wind particles. As a result, any auroras that do form tend to appear as faint, diffuse glows rather than bright, well-defined curtains.This …
