The Aurora Australis, or the southern lights as it is often called, is visible from the high southern latitudes in Antarctica, South America and Australia. This natural light display is caused by the collision of energetic charged particles with atoms in the high latitude atmosphere.

The brightness of aurorae varies from being barely visible to bright enough to read a book at night. Usually aurorae are only visible in the night sky because they are not as bright as the sunlit sky.

Here, you can see a video that was made out of the still images taken from the International Space Station as it crossed over the southern Indian Ocean on September 11, 2011.

Image credit: NASA, crew of Expedition 29

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