THE night skies were ablaze on the weekend, luring countless locals out of heated homes to witness one of nature’s most spectacular phenomena – the aurora australis, or southern lights.

The geomagnetic storm that created the dazzling display was the strongest in more than 20 years, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

As word spread on social media, people jumped in their cars to dark-sky spots or were fortunate to see the dancing colours of vivid pinks, reds and purple, greens and blues from their properties.

There were even ‘traffic jams’ on the Mornington Peninsula and in Gippsland as amateur aurora chasers competed for viewing hotspots.

The aurora was at its most spectacular on Saturday night, thanks to clear skies, visible from most areas of Australia.

On Wednesday and Thursday there were four coronal mass ejections from the sun, meaning highly charged plasma erupted and streamed into space.

When those charged particles, known as the solar wind, hit the Earth’s magnetic field, they created the stunning auroras.

Those who didn’t venture out, or were blissfully unaware of nature’s vivid picture show, could find a plethora of spectacular images on social media to experience it vicariously.

Locals also captured the long string of lights known as the Starlink satellite, also a spectacular sight.

The weekend’s southern lights could be seen by the naked eye, especially away from city or ambient light, but were best viewed through camera phones and advanced cameras, which captured the dancing colours in all their glory.

Local photographer and experienced aurora chaser Allen McCauley said the aurora was visible to the naked eye on Saturday night, especially further out of town.

In the early hours of Friday he based himself at Cape Grant, near the gannet colony.

On Saturday, between 7pm and midnight, he photographed it from his Portland home, then headed west to Bishops Rock at Cape Bridgewater, and finally east to Dutton Way.

Mr McCauley used a Canon mirrorless camera with a 14mm f/2.8 wide angle lens set at ISO 2500 and at 13 seconds’ exposure for most of his 300 images of the aurora.

“You could see it with your naked eye on Saturday night. Most of the time with auroras, you don’t see any of the colour, just beams in white, but cameras on a longer exposure time will pick up the colours.

“It was such a large aurora, covering the whole sky, and so strong, it was fantastic,” he said.