Southern lights (Stewart Island)

The southern lights, or aurora australis, are a natural light show in the sky made when charged particles from the Sun hit oxygen and nitrogen high in Earth's atmosphere. The gases glow green, red and purple, in curtains, rays and spirals. The southern lights look almost the same as the northern lights and change at the same time as them.

The globe marks them over Stewart Island, called Rakiura in Māori, the third-largest island of New Zealand. It lies about 30 kilometres south of the South Island across Foveaux Strait and covers roughly 1,700 square kilometres. The southern lights can be seen from Antarctica, Patagonia, southeastern Australia, New Zealand and the Falkland Islands, and in a big magnetic storm they can reach even farther north.

Why these lights glow

The Sun sends out a stream of particles called the solar wind. When it speeds up, it shakes Earth's magnetic bubble, and electrons and protons pour down toward the poles.

They strike thin air far above the ground, usually around 100 kilometres up, and each gas gives off its own color. Auroras gather in a ring around each pole called the auroral oval, which is why places near Antarctica see them most often.

Stewart Island, land of glowing skies

The island's Māori name, Rakiura, is usually translated as 'glowing skies', a reference to the aurora australis. Another old name, Te Punga o Te Waka a Māui, means 'the anchor stone of Māui's canoe', from a legend in which Māui fished up the North Island.

Archaeology shows people settled here in the 14th century. Captain James Cook sailed around it in 1770 but drew it as a peninsula of the South Island, and the island was later proved by sailors to be separate. Its English name honors William Stewart, first officer of the ship Pegasus.

A wild, quiet island

Stewart Island is hilly and thickly forested, with its highest point, Mount Anglem, rising to 980 metres. More than 80 percent of it is Rakiura National Park, and almost all of the land belongs to the New Zealand government.

Only about 486 people live here, mostly in the village of Oban, which ferries connect to Bluff. Nearby Ulva Island is a sanctuary kept free of introduced pests, and Codfish Island protects the kākāpō, a rare parrot.

On the globe

The model shows green curtains of the southern lights over the island of southern New Zealand.